[NOTE: This is the article I deleted yesterday. I got up at 2:30 a.m. to rewrite it.]
Last week (8.21.08) I used a quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), which in part read that various contemporary philosophers "interpret ‘naturalism’ differently," that "philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand ‘naturalism’ in a unrestrictive way..." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/index.html#note-1
To prevent this Academy blog from being misunderstood, I found it necessary to post in the left-hand sidebar column the "strong" definition of "Naturalism" to which this Academy holds itself. It's author wrote a great many things which I'm certain would be arguable in this blog; as well as a strong definition of "Naturalism," this Academy holds a "strong" position on the philosophy of Objectivism, using quotes Objectivists where they support the Naturalist convictions argued here. Mr. Fuller can not be said to be Objectivist, but I cannot deny that his definition of Naturalism is my own. I can place Objectivism into Fuller's definition like a hand in a custom-made glove.
As to what is "weak" Naturalism, it often not only strays from the conviction that "natural grounds" are objectively definable and that in the area of human behavior "man's will" is as much a law of nature as are the firings of neurons and the possibility that some behavioral traits are genetic. How else to explain the lives of twins, separated at birth, who without knowledge of the other's existence, has managed to put together a life where even his choice of clothes is similar, not to mention the type of house in which he lives and the model of car he drives?
But this Academy recognizes that such things are not the things in a person's life that are metaphysically important. Siblings often have divergent world views while dressing alike; they often diverge from their parents' religion yet continue to maintain similar views on other things of importance. This is where the free will of the individual comes into play. Clothes and cars are not of metaphysically important where a person cares more for his own character and integrity, more for his ethics and world view, than for the aesthetics of his everyday choices.
SEP says, "There may be as much philosophical controversy about how to distinguish naturalism from non-naturalism as there is about which view is correct." And quite often it appears that statements or even entire theories put forth and defended by those who call themselves Naturalists seem, to other peoples' opinions, to be not only inclined to weaker definitions, but in an "unrestrictive way" appear to be completely un-Naturalistic.
Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore are big targets for this Academy to be disagreeing with, but certain ideas cannot be allowed to go unchallenged, even by someone such as myself who has basically zero scientific background compared the people who's ideas need challenging. Such is the case with Dennett and Blackmore's defence of "memes."
Blackmore "has a degree in psychology and physiology from Oxford University (1973) and a PhD in parapsychology from the University of Surrey (1980). Her research interests include memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, and meditation; [ ] no longer works on the paranormal; [ ] writes a blog for the Guardian newspaper," and appears on television. "She is author of over sixty academic articles, about forty book contributions, and many book reviews. Her books include Beyond the Body (1982), [ ] Test Your Psychic Powers (with Adam Hart-Davis, 1997), and The Meme Machine (1999). Her latest book is Conversations on Consciousness [was] due out in the USA in January 2006." http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/
Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to describe "a unit of culture." More specifically, it describes what causes that "unit" to exist. The definition of a "unit" of culture seems to be found in the definition of meme.
Calling herself a "memeticist," Blackmore's ideas are characterized by the PBS station WGBH : "[C]ulture is carried forward by memes, [which are] units of ideas, habits, skills, stories, customs, and beliefs that are passed from one person to another by imitation or teaching. Memes are, in effect, units of information that are self-replicating and changeable, just as genes are." [italics added] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/2/l_072_05.html
Objectively one must ask how something that is learned from another person through example or words can be "self-replicating just as genes are." Speaking of the comparison in the way genes and memes change, Blackwell says: "Our ideas, catch phrases, beliefs, games, and creations also evolve. Think of the differences between Ice Age cave art and modern painting, the chants and songs of centuries-ago people and the crooning of Britney Spears, the stone axe and the atomic bomb. Is there something gene-like that carries culture?" [ibid]
"Evolutionary Epistemology is a naturalistic approach [whereby] trial and error learning and the evolution of scientific theories are construed as selection processes," states the SEP, under the general description of memes. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-evolutionary/ "[Richard] Dawkins observed," says the SEP, "that [ ] biological evolution is differential reproduction. [ ] If culture was to evolve, on this view, there had to be cultural 'replicators', or entities whose differential replication in culture constituted the cultural evolutionary process. [Memes] were characterized as informational entities which infect our brains, 'leaping from head to head' via what we ordinarily call imitation. Common examples include infectious tunes, and religious ideologies."
Princeton online describes culture as "the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group" and "acculturation: all the knowledge and values shared by a society." http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GZEZ,GZEZ:2008-32,GZEZ:en-GB&pwst=1&defl=en&q=define:culture&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title Values and knowledge are metaphysical components of the concepts held by a person. Those which are held in common among many in a society are merely that: common, and are hardly "infections leaping from head to head."
By most accounts, Naturalism does not support the idea of human free will. "A major problem with theories of free will is that arbitrary choices are simply random. If the will is fundamentally a randomizer, it is not clear how will is different from some kind of mathematical function. [ ] And if it is not different, then there would seem to be no reason not to assimilate "will" to naturalistic theories about indeterminacy and randomness in physical systems. Free will, consequently, would provide no basis for denying a materialistic and naturalistic interpretation of the self. " Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.
But a Naturalistic interpretation of the self ought to include the idea that some "infectious tunes," for example, are actually repulsed by the minds of some people, for the very same reasons that create the values on which a person's character and integrity are grounded: the epistemic logic that gave those values their grounding. Why is it that some persons despise the music of Johann Strauss? of Elvis? of the entire Romantic school of concertos and symphonies?
Could it be they despise such music on the basis that the metaphysical values contained within those forms are anti-thetical to the live one has chosen to live? Naturalism in art is considered a backlash to the "idealism" of Romanticism. If one can choose to create a backlash to something one despises, what causes the despisement, what causes a desire or a need for a backlash, and what causes the precise form of the backlash? Such causes are decided by the values one has chosen, and values are based on the validations of one's epistemology.
If Naturalism in literature is the form of backlash to Romanticism accepted and used by most people who despise Romanticism, is it because of some of biological entity of consciousness called a "meme," or is it because once the wheel has been invented, it is not necessary to re-invent it? And if someone can create a new form of literature, for whatever reason, whether out of idealism or out of hatred for one or another form of idealism, is that not the definition of free will?
Why is it that I am expected by secular science to accept "that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds," [Fuller] while at the same time I am expected to dismiss any idea of free will as against natural grounds? Is it because Naturalism "as encompassing sensationalism, materialism, determinism and reductionism" [David Ray Griffin] are "backlashes" against the theist defenses of free will?
Are the deterministic-minded scientists so afraid of giving in to theists' beliefs in free will that they are willing to go to any length to state a hypothesis that might give credence to the denial of free will?
It does not seem possible that a belief in free will could be construed as a belief in the supernatural. If Aristotle could formulate the concept of "qua," an objective standard applicable to any entity of life based on the nature of that particular entity where its "qua" was not necessarily applicable to any other entity of life--for example the difference in the nature of a deer and a hippopotamus--then is it not justifiable to believe that standards, not memes, are the basis of commonly held concepts among men?
If "weak," or non-existent Naturalism strays from the conviction that "natural grounds" in empirical reality are objective in nature, strays from comprehending "man's will" as a law of nature of "Man qua Man," then it strays from a rational difference of opinion about the nature of the "supernatural."
"Free will is a concept in traditional philosophy used to refer to the belief that human behavior is not absolutely determined by external causes," says The Skeptics Dictionary. http://www.skepdic.com/freewill.html "Traditionally, those who deny the existence of free will look to fate, supernatural powers, or material causes as the determinants of human behavior."
Invoking "supernatural powers" means that even in the realm of theists, there are "weak" and "strong" principles at work. Naturalists who deny free will can claim their denial is justified because strong theists justify free will based on supernaturalism, that of the existence of God or a Creator. "Free will advocates [ ] believe that while everything else in the universe may be the inevitable consequence of external forces, human behavior is unique and is determined by the agent, not by God or the stars or the laws of nature."
Now, this is where things begin to bog down and get messy. Christians have always argued for free will based on the theory that God granted it to us. The Skeptics Dictionary says the opposite. Deists, who deny any organized religion is legitimate, base their strict devotion to God precisely because they say it was God who gave Man Reason, and that from Reason necessarily comes free will.
Most Naturalists claim free will does not exist because their epistemic qualifiers for its existence are different than those of theists. Yet in other science you may read this: "Free will is probably located in the pre-frontal cortex, and we may even be able to narrow it down to the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex." --Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works
According to Pinker's homepage at Harvard University his short bio goes this way: "Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and Slate, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature."
Cognitive science is the area of expertise for Daniel Dennett. He seems, on a first reading, to disagree with Pinker. Dennett "is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology." http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dennett.html "Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are." http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/dan_dennett.html
I repeat, this is where things bog down and get messy. Perhaps Dennett does not disagree with which part of the brain free will is found in, but he denies that it has to do with epistemic considerations or metaphysical choices. "He argues that the brain’s computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness — isn’t." [ibid]
"The first problem that really grabbed me was the question of how on Earth a brain can learn. I thought there's got to be some way that neurons can try things out by trial and error and in effect get punished for getting it wrong and encouraged for getting it right." http://www.pbs.org/saf/1103/features/dennett.htm
The metaphysics of this Academy would maintain that while trial and error are necessary given that Man is not supernatural and omniscient, the "reward for getting it right" is the rational recognition that a syllogism of deductive logic was valid and thus memorable. In other words, in an effort of trial and error, the mind goes through equations of language, such as "If I stick my finger in a flame, my finger will burn." Man knows this from trial and error, and it is rationally evident, as well as physically, painfully evident.
The mind is limited in the number of deductive "equations" it can make. The number is 256, including variations known as "moods and figures." Out of these 256, only fifteen are valid. This means the mind has only 15 chances to "get it right," while it has 241 chances to "get it wrong." Is this not the "some way" that Dennett says was "the first problem that really grabbed him"?
Now, I'm certain that Dennett, an expert logician, went beyond this explanation to look for the neurological explanations for what happens in the brain during these 15 valid moments and these 241 invalid moments.
But what is revealing here is when he says that rational recognitions of logical validity "are just simple switches and springs and so forth. [ ] It takes on just the tiniest bit of mentality. It does something that we think of as requiring a mind."
So here is a Naturalist, a revered scientist in his many fields, who does not deny the existence of free will, but attributes it to "switches and springs" which "take on just the tiniest bit of mentality," in an act "that we think of as requiring a mind."
Well, doesn't it require a mind? Not the kind of rational mind a man of his stature and education would be expected to recognize.
This tiny bit of mentality is "what I call the intentional stance. Think of something as simple as a mousetrap. It's set up, it's open, it's waiting. Well, there's one little thing it can do. It can snap. And it may snap at the right sort of thing, it may snap at the wrong sort of thing."
So free will is the "snapping" of "mousetraps" in the "tiniest bit of mentality" that isn't really what we think of a mind, and the fact that it snaps at the wrong sorts of things means Dennett, this cognitive scientist, is not recognizing that when the mousetrap "snaps" it does so in an act of epistemological validation or invalidation of the syllogism that makes the whole mousetrap work in the first place.
I'm not willing to buy into any of it. Yes, I do not deny that the mind works neurologically but I stand with the "philosophers who maintain that the most important aspects of consciousness — intentionality and subjective quality," http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dennett.html are matters of value judgments made by people who have validated enough syllogistic mousetraps to be able to rationally choose which mousetrap to spring and when to spring it.
I do not deny that if memes exist they are things that get trapped in our minds as "units of culture," but I deny that they are "infections" that cause us to do such mindless and purposeless things as to fold our toilet paper in squares. http://kingsofsimulcast.blogspot.com/2008/02/toilet-paper-meme.html Anyone who folds TP in squares is not infected with the idea, but perhaps for no reason whatever that could be identified, chose to fold it. ""A major problem with theories of free will is that arbitrary choices are simply random." [Kelly]
So it would seem that memeticists such as Blackwell and Dennett and others cannot bring themselves to the simple idea that free will is often arbitrary and random, and that acts of free will such folding one's TP may have no "infectious" content but is a decidedly human and silly thing to do.
I cannot hold a strong position on Naturalism, and at the same time deny that the free will of humans exists; nor accept that its existence is based on the supernatural grace of God; nor deny that its existence is based on the justified natural grounds that consciousness can arise from atomistic and tychistic events tied to the nature of the brain itself.
(Tychism: A term derived from the Greek, tyche, fortune, chance, and employed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to express any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos. Also the hypothesis that evolution occurs owing to fortuitous variations.) http://www.ditext.com/runes/t.html
Chance is an objective reality, and to deny that consciousness and free will are natural, not supernatural; or to accept it as supernatural, from a Creator rather than as existents of objective reality based on natural law, is to deny that Naturalism is objective, making it impossible to deny that some of its claims are not defences against theist arguments that free will can only come from God.
"The philosophical goal of pursuing knowledge about the truth of naturalism contributes to bringing the philosopher to an epistemic state where a cultural consequence is that the person desires and [ ] endeavors to bring about a certain state of culture, in this case, a mainly secularized academia. [T]he most important philosophical aspect of pursuing this cultural goal in a philosophically governed way is producing better arguments (to put matters in a simplified way) than the theist, which requires an openness to a fair-minded evaluation of good arguments for theism." [italics added] Quentin Smith http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm
It is obvious that aguments of "infections" and "mousetraps" and "tiny bits of mentality" and the reasons people around the world fold their TP into squares, and that "the brain’s computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness — isn’t," are not better arguments than the Deist who claims a devout belief in God because only Reason can bestow Reason.
It is also obvious that the arguments of Naturalism are becoming so fragmented and convoluted in some cases, that the Creationist have a good chance of relegating Naturalism to the dust bin, if only because the Creationists sound so much more rational than some of our best known secularists.
And I thought Naturalism was about rationality, whereas theism was about the acceptance of faith, the most powerful abnegator of reason in the arsenal of logic--or illogic.
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Showing posts with label Dawkin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dawkin. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Loss of Secularism in Naturalism Part 5; Defeator Arguments
The case has been made that many naturalists are, in the words of Dr. Quentin Smith, http://www.wmich.edu/philosophy/index.php?content=smith_faculty_profile "uninformed," having an "unjustified true belief" in the ancient science. "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism"; PHILO [see link in left column of this blog] http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm
The ancient science is nothing less than calling a spade a spade, which in the words of Leonard Peikoff http://www.peikoff.com/ concerning existence is "a self-sufficient primary [that is] not a product of a supernatural dimension, or of anything else," with nothing being previous to existence, "its nature [ ] irreducible and unalterable." Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology ; by Ayn Rand. Piekoff defines it in its atheistic countenance, but even in its theistic trappings it is irreducible, unalterable, and "natural" in its working, in a form of molecules-to-man evolution in its epistemology.
"As Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy (1946) points out, philosophy and practical science were not originally separate. They were born together in the beginning of the 6th century BC and they both involved a transition from a theistic toward a natural way of thinking about the world." http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/section1(210).htm
"The controversy [between the theists and the naturalists] erupted early in the 19th Century when geological discoveries implied that the earth is much older than was suggested by the contents of the Judeo-Christian Bible [ ] The profound impact of this early debate upon the popular mind was directly responsible for the 1857-1860 revival in protestant religious enthusiasm."
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Theistic-realism
In "the publication of The Genesis Flood in 1961, Dr. [Henry] Morris saw clearly that good science—the proper handling and interpretation of scientific evidence—would demonstrate the veracity of the biblical accounts of Creation and the Flood." [italics added]
"Today, thousands of creation scientists [can] be found in literally every discipline of science [ ] Evolutionists are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction that evolution is 'science' and creation science is 'religion.' Such statements today merely reveal the speaker's own liberal social philosophies—not his or her awareness of scientific facts." [italics added] http://www.icr.org/research/ The Institute for Creation Research, from which this quote comes, maintains laboratory facilities on its campus in Dallas, Texas. Its researchers and faculty http://www.icr.org/research/scientists_faculty/ are well-recognized in their fields.
In the "National Review," author Barry Freundel reviews the ideas of one of the latest and most controversial of these creationists, Phillip Johnson, and his book "Reason in the Balance." Johnson himself is also Program Advisor to Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, UC Berkeley, where he is a law professor and former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, and holder of a named chair at Berkeley. (See below for "Discovery Institute.")
But before we get to any discussion of Johnson's book, we need a definition of Naturalism. "Carl Sagan summed up the philosophy in these words: 'The Cosmos is all there is, all there has been and all there ever will be.' A naturalist believes that nature is the whole show. There is no 'super-nature' (God). For sure a naturalist could talk about a pantheistic 'God' who is Life Force or Energy or even the Ground of Being, but not Creator. There is no place in a naturalist scheme for a God existing independent of nature, who created it and on whom it depends." http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2964/reason.html
But this is not the view of many naturalists, though they may keep it out of their work. Most have some logical or emotional basis for a continuing belief in a deity, and they are not to be maligned for this.
"[R]eligion is an early form of philosophy, [ ] the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, [ ] before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very—how should I say it?—dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith."
“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” March 1964 http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/religion.html
And "faith" is the very nature of the disagreement between theists of any sort and naturalists of any sort.
"Explaining in great detail [ ] Naturalism and its deep flaws," [quoting Johnson,] Freundel claims Johnson makes a case that Naturalism is as much a religion as any other, if it means "a system based on unchallengeable orthodoxies. Indeed Naturalism may be more 'fundamentalist' than [ ]conventionally defined fundamentalism." The disagreements between naturalism and religion "is leading us toward a culture war [ ] when rational discourse breaks down and one side resorts to denigrating the other -- in this case, as "phobic," "authoritarian," and otherwise dangerous. Only by restoring the search for objective truth, and allowing all viewpoints a fair hearing, can we avoid such a frightening prospect." [italics added] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n24_v47/ai_17955372
Johnson, in his chapter "Theistic Naturalism and Theistic Realism", wants us to believe that "the much-hyped physical theory of everything may never be more than a myth (and in any case would explain disappointingly little)"; and that "scientists pursuing the grand project [ ] have refused to consider that there may be limits to what can be learned about reality through their methodology. [ ] Perhaps their dogmatic metaphysical naturalism has even led scientists to disregard some aspect of reality that is virtually staring them in the face. Could it be, for example, that living organisms (in Richard Dawkin's wording) 'give the appearance of having designed for a purpose' because in fact they are designed?"
To a creationist, this fallacious logic is all that is needed to write off naturalism as the denial of creationism, when no such thing is intended. Peikoff's definition of existence may belong to that of the atheists, but it is astoundingly true that "thousands of creation scientists [can] be found in literally every discipline of science," and that does not disclude the field of naturalism. One does not need to be atheist to believe that God created the universe with laws that allow for our understanding of a molecules-to-man epistemology.
"Scientific naturalists meet this shocking suggestion with one of two inconsistent responses," says the Discovery Institute. http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=358 "One is to make a few superficial debater's points against design and then declare the subject closed." This is precisely what Smith contends too many of us do with a wave of the hand. It is precisely the reason that in some quarters, creationism is winning, all too easily, and the very reason we naturalists must learn arguments that defeat the "defeator arguments" of the creationists. It is easy for us to see that the creationists often use fallacious, emotion-laced or based logic. But it is not as easy to overcome these fallacious objections in the real world when we ourselves have no understanding of how to defeat the creationistic logic that would have us becoming the skeptical position against theism, rather than what ought to be happening, which is reverting back to the pre-1967, pre-Plantinga era when theism was the skeptical position against naturalism.
The Discovery Institute quotes Johnson: "[T]he very atheistic physicist Steven Weinberg [says] '[T]he only way that any sort of science can proceed is to assume that there is no divine intervention and to see how far one can get with that assumption.'"
To "assume there is no divine intervention" may be the atheist platform of naturalism, but does not even attempt to overcome Johnson's defeators. This abdication of any dismissal of creationism denies the epistemic principle of existence as a self-sufficient primary, ignores logic that is assumed in the argument for Creation, and ignores (or affirms) that there must be the possibility that before Creation there was "nothingness" as the only existent.
But the sound conclusion is that "nothingness" cannot be reified into an existent. Thus, according to this hypothesis by Weinberg, there is the tacit admission that "nothingness" was once a reified existent, and that we need to "see how far we can get" with that illogical assumption.
For any committed creationist, Johnson's argument is this: "On the contrary, the very notion of 'natural law' grew out of the concept of a lawmaker."
I must, myself, assume from ignorance that this is where Augustine and Plotinus had such an effect in reversing the roles of naturalistic world view to being the skeptical position of theism, as Smith alludes to in PHILO.
This "very notion," of the concept of a lawmaker, Johnson says of biology as he uses one example, "will not only survive but prosper if it turns out that genetic information really is the product of preexisting intelligence. Biologists will have to give up their dogmatic materialism and discard unproductive hypotheses like the prebiotic soup...Freed of the metaphysical chains that tie it to nineteenth-century materialism, biology can turn to the fascinating task of discovering how the intelligence embodied in the genetic information works through matter to make the organism function." [italics added] How many naturalists can argue that while it is our job to discover such nature embodied in genetic information, that this natural intelligence is not divinely created but is an act naturalistic molecules-to-man, even if he/she must maintain a belief in the supernatural creation of the molecules themselves, as many naturalists do?
Yet, for all his subjectivity, Johnson makes the astonishing declaration that, "If there really is a materialist explanation for the origin of life, or the human mind, it surely will be found by a scientist who resolutely ignores the objections of people like me and persists in looking for it."
His theme in this book may come when he writes, about the current state of naturalist knowledge, that "the managers of the enterprise may be confident that a smashing success is just around the corner," then undercutting that by saying the epistemic problem "is deciding when to stop believing [the] promises of eventual success, particularly when the managers have been successful in the past.
"How can we tell who is correct? ...the solution is not to grant the insiders the exclusive privilege of auditing themselves. I do not urge scientists to give up on any theory or research agenda until they themselves are convinced that further efforts would be fruitless."
This is why the Discovery Institute calls it "shocking [ ] to make a few superficial debater's points against design and then declare the subject closed." Johnson wants the debate. He knows as well as Quentin Smith does that most committed naturalists are "uninformed" with "unjustified true beliefs." He thinks his creationistic arguments will hold up in this increasingly de-secularized, evangelical atmosphere in which our society now exists. He's probably right.
Johnson gives us our due on the one hand, then undercuts it with the other. "In view of the cultural importance of the naturalistic worldview, however, and its status as virtually the official philosophy of government and education, there is a need for informed outsiders to point out that claims are often made in the name of science that go far beyond the available evidence." [italics added]
So Johnson also uses the word "informed" to designate himself and others like him who can defeat our arguments. But what do they use as defeators? The fall-back position of saying, "Naturalists have not proved this or that, we are going beyond our own proofs into supposition, and therefore the creationists must maintain their own belief that a blind watchmaker is not the cause of what we propose.
But he labels such attempts such as the scientist who resolutely ignores the objections of people like him and persists in looking for naturalistic proof--and finding it--attempts at working with "heuristic assumptions," or assumptions that provide help in the solution but that are not independently justifiable or provable. And yet, if they are not provable, how can the scientist who ignores critics like Johnson find that there "really is a materialist explanation for the origin of life?"
"How can we tell who is correct?" Johnson asks. "[T]he solution is not to grant the insiders the exclusive privilege of auditing themselves."
But it never has been the exclusive privilege of any science to audit itself, because every science has an impact in one way or another on the other sciences and on the arts and humanities in general, not to mention that more generalized philosophers of epistemology must set the standards. (Smith, himself, is a professor of, among other things, epistemology.)
"Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go," wrote Ayn Rand. "It is not the special sciences that teach man to think; it is philosophy that lays down the epistemological criteria of all special sciences." http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/science.html It makes one wonder what the epistemological criteria must be for Johnson's odd defence of creationism. He seems to find it in his desire for the naturalists to go on toiling, maintaining "the fiction that evolution is 'science' and creation science is 'religion;'" or that "creation science" which assumes the supernatural ought to go about attempting to prove supernaturalism; in the desire that naturalists go on "pursuing the grand project;" or that we refuse "to consider that there may be limits to what can be learned about reality through [naturalistic] methodology."
I know of no naturalist who would claim there are no limits. The state of science changes all the time, and the methodology of the twenty-first century is not the methodology of the Atomists.
No, the epistemology seems to be in the attitude that a little bit of evolutionism is not so worrysome.
To "Johnson and his ilk [a] new adaptation here, a lost adaptation there--who cares?" writes Michael Ruse in "Naturalistic Fallacy" Reason Magazine http://www.reason.com/news/show/30010.html " Rather, it is the very moral fiber of the nation that counts. Let in evolution, and pornography, abortion, and sodomy are next. Or rather, because we let in evolution, pornography, abortion, and sodomy are now. Johnson starts with an introduction to the enemy [as those] 'who assume that God exists only as an idea in the minds of religious believers [,that] humankind created God--not the other way around. In that case, rationality requires that we recognize the Creator as the imaginary being he always has been, and that we rely only on things that are real, such as ourselves and the material world of nature."
That is exactly Smith's point when he writes, "The four goals of the informed naturalist are i) retrieve naturalism from its de facto reclassification by medieval philosophers; ii) reclassify the philosophy of religion as a subfield of naturalism, viz. skepticism about naturalism, so that the position in the various fields of philosophy formerly occupied by 'the philosophy of religion' is replaced by the field 'the philosophy of naturalism;' iii) to understand in outline an actually extant version of original naturalism (Greco-Roman naturalism) that these original naturalists justifiably believed to be an informed naturalism and which contemporary informed naturalists justifiably believe is approximately the best that could be done by naturalists in the epistemic situation of Greco-Roman philosophers; and iii) A third goal is to understand in outline an actually extant version of original naturalism (Greco-Roman naturalism) that these original naturalists justifiably believed to be an informed naturalism and which contemporary informed naturalists justifiably believe is approximately the best that could be done by naturalists in the epistemic situation of Greco-Roman philosophers; [and] iv) to justifiably reformulate, and answer, the two basic ontological why-questions that medieval philosophers took over from the Greco-Roman naturalists, and which have (for the most part) remained ever since 'questions asked in the field of the philosophy of religion.' The successful accomplishments of these four tasks will restore academia to the mainstream secularization it possessed before the post-1967 breakdown in the field of philosophy."
"This retrieval [i] is also a reversal. The aim is that theism be justifiably reclassified as a subfield of naturalism, namely, as a skepticism about the basic principles of naturalism whose refutation serves to stimulate and further develop the naturalist program. 'Philosophy of religion' disappears, to be replaced by a new subfield of naturalism, namely, 'skepticism about naturalism,' with skeptical arguments being put forth and argued against, with the aim in mind of further developing the argumentative foundations of the naturalist world-view."
"[T]he most basic answers to the ontological why-questions in a certain naturalist theory permit the two most basic why-questions, formulated in the following way, to be positively answered, [and] then that theory is explanatorily complete.
"Q1. Why do these things exist and why do these laws of nature obtain rather than some other possible things and other possible laws of nature?
"Q2. Why is it the case that there is not only nothing? (The reason for formulating the question this way will become apparent when I discuss the atomists.)" [For that discussion, please read Smith's paper in the link at the top of this blog.]
Clearly, we "uninformed" naturalists have a long way to go. Not being in academia, I have long believed that my naturalism was "justified true belief." But then, I do find myself in a different class from most naturalists who are either agnostic or have some form of belief in a creator.
My argument for naturalism runs this way, as I said above and have said on many past occasions: existence is self-sufficient, primary, the given, and is "self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic events), and only incidentally productive of man [Greek Atomism]; that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny," http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html because anything less that this denotation would require that "nothingness" be the original state of existence and it is an epistemic contradiction to insist that "nothingness" was at one time an existent, the thing that existed before existence existed. There can be no "thing" in existence before existence allowed for the conditions necessary for a "thing."
"Existence and identity are not attributes of existents, they are the existents . . . . The units of the concepts “existence” and “identity” are every entity, attribute, action, event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist." Ayn Rand: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
The deductive syllogisms by which we uninformed naturalists must come to discover are the "defeators" of our beliefs, defeators which prevent our beliefs from being "justified and true" beliefs, Smith lays out in his paper:
Where "N (a thesis). Naturalism, i.e., the thesis that there exist inanimate or animate bodies, with animate bodies being either intelligent organisms or non-intelligent organisms, but there exists nothing supernatural; then
"A (a defeated justifier). A is the argument that contemporary science and naturalist philosophy are known to be probably or certainly true, even though A includes no counterarguments against contemporary arguments for theism: or
"DA (a defeater for the justifier A). DA is a sound argument that argument A is unsound; or
"B (a defeated justifier). B is an argument that, contemporary science and naturalist philosophy, when conjoined with an evaluation of contemporary theist arguments for not-
N, (where “not-N” implies naturalism is not true) justify not-N; or
"C (an undefeated justifier for N). C is the argument that, contemporary science and naturalist philosophy, when conjoined with an evaluation of contemporary theist arguments for not-N, justify N.
"According to the informed naturalist, the predicament of at least ninety-nine percent of contemporary naturalists is represented in the following columns. We can state very briefly the arguments different philosophers believe in terms of our symbols. The mentioned belief states are arguments believed to be sound by the relevant parties.
"Belief State of Most Contemporary Naturalists
1.A.
Defeater Recognized by Informed Naturalists
10.DB.
"Since both A and B are defeated, most contemporary naturalists, as well as most contemporary theists, hold defeated beliefs about the truth-value of naturalism. The informed naturalist knows the complex argument C that constitutes the defeater of B and the justification of N, as well as meets other conditions explained later in this paper.
"Belief State of Informed Naturalists
13.C.
The ancient science is nothing less than calling a spade a spade, which in the words of Leonard Peikoff http://www.peikoff.com/ concerning existence is "a self-sufficient primary [that is] not a product of a supernatural dimension, or of anything else," with nothing being previous to existence, "its nature [ ] irreducible and unalterable." Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology ; by Ayn Rand. Piekoff defines it in its atheistic countenance, but even in its theistic trappings it is irreducible, unalterable, and "natural" in its working, in a form of molecules-to-man evolution in its epistemology.
"As Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy (1946) points out, philosophy and practical science were not originally separate. They were born together in the beginning of the 6th century BC and they both involved a transition from a theistic toward a natural way of thinking about the world." http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/section1(210).htm
"The controversy [between the theists and the naturalists] erupted early in the 19th Century when geological discoveries implied that the earth is much older than was suggested by the contents of the Judeo-Christian Bible [ ] The profound impact of this early debate upon the popular mind was directly responsible for the 1857-1860 revival in protestant religious enthusiasm."
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Theistic-realism
In "the publication of The Genesis Flood in 1961, Dr. [Henry] Morris saw clearly that good science—the proper handling and interpretation of scientific evidence—would demonstrate the veracity of the biblical accounts of Creation and the Flood." [italics added]
"Today, thousands of creation scientists [can] be found in literally every discipline of science [ ] Evolutionists are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction that evolution is 'science' and creation science is 'religion.' Such statements today merely reveal the speaker's own liberal social philosophies—not his or her awareness of scientific facts." [italics added] http://www.icr.org/research/ The Institute for Creation Research, from which this quote comes, maintains laboratory facilities on its campus in Dallas, Texas. Its researchers and faculty http://www.icr.org/research/scientists_faculty/ are well-recognized in their fields.
In the "National Review," author Barry Freundel reviews the ideas of one of the latest and most controversial of these creationists, Phillip Johnson, and his book "Reason in the Balance." Johnson himself is also Program Advisor to Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, UC Berkeley, where he is a law professor and former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, and holder of a named chair at Berkeley. (See below for "Discovery Institute.")
But before we get to any discussion of Johnson's book, we need a definition of Naturalism. "Carl Sagan summed up the philosophy in these words: 'The Cosmos is all there is, all there has been and all there ever will be.' A naturalist believes that nature is the whole show. There is no 'super-nature' (God). For sure a naturalist could talk about a pantheistic 'God' who is Life Force or Energy or even the Ground of Being, but not Creator. There is no place in a naturalist scheme for a God existing independent of nature, who created it and on whom it depends." http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2964/reason.html
But this is not the view of many naturalists, though they may keep it out of their work. Most have some logical or emotional basis for a continuing belief in a deity, and they are not to be maligned for this.
"[R]eligion is an early form of philosophy, [ ] the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, [ ] before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very—how should I say it?—dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith."
“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” March 1964 http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/religion.html
And "faith" is the very nature of the disagreement between theists of any sort and naturalists of any sort.
"Explaining in great detail [ ] Naturalism and its deep flaws," [quoting Johnson,] Freundel claims Johnson makes a case that Naturalism is as much a religion as any other, if it means "a system based on unchallengeable orthodoxies. Indeed Naturalism may be more 'fundamentalist' than [ ]conventionally defined fundamentalism." The disagreements between naturalism and religion "is leading us toward a culture war [ ] when rational discourse breaks down and one side resorts to denigrating the other -- in this case, as "phobic," "authoritarian," and otherwise dangerous. Only by restoring the search for objective truth, and allowing all viewpoints a fair hearing, can we avoid such a frightening prospect." [italics added] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n24_v47/ai_17955372
Johnson, in his chapter "Theistic Naturalism and Theistic Realism", wants us to believe that "the much-hyped physical theory of everything may never be more than a myth (and in any case would explain disappointingly little)"; and that "scientists pursuing the grand project [ ] have refused to consider that there may be limits to what can be learned about reality through their methodology. [ ] Perhaps their dogmatic metaphysical naturalism has even led scientists to disregard some aspect of reality that is virtually staring them in the face. Could it be, for example, that living organisms (in Richard Dawkin's wording) 'give the appearance of having designed for a purpose' because in fact they are designed?"
To a creationist, this fallacious logic is all that is needed to write off naturalism as the denial of creationism, when no such thing is intended. Peikoff's definition of existence may belong to that of the atheists, but it is astoundingly true that "thousands of creation scientists [can] be found in literally every discipline of science," and that does not disclude the field of naturalism. One does not need to be atheist to believe that God created the universe with laws that allow for our understanding of a molecules-to-man epistemology.
"Scientific naturalists meet this shocking suggestion with one of two inconsistent responses," says the Discovery Institute. http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=358 "One is to make a few superficial debater's points against design and then declare the subject closed." This is precisely what Smith contends too many of us do with a wave of the hand. It is precisely the reason that in some quarters, creationism is winning, all too easily, and the very reason we naturalists must learn arguments that defeat the "defeator arguments" of the creationists. It is easy for us to see that the creationists often use fallacious, emotion-laced or based logic. But it is not as easy to overcome these fallacious objections in the real world when we ourselves have no understanding of how to defeat the creationistic logic that would have us becoming the skeptical position against theism, rather than what ought to be happening, which is reverting back to the pre-1967, pre-Plantinga era when theism was the skeptical position against naturalism.
The Discovery Institute quotes Johnson: "[T]he very atheistic physicist Steven Weinberg [says] '[T]he only way that any sort of science can proceed is to assume that there is no divine intervention and to see how far one can get with that assumption.'"
To "assume there is no divine intervention" may be the atheist platform of naturalism, but does not even attempt to overcome Johnson's defeators. This abdication of any dismissal of creationism denies the epistemic principle of existence as a self-sufficient primary, ignores logic that is assumed in the argument for Creation, and ignores (or affirms) that there must be the possibility that before Creation there was "nothingness" as the only existent.
But the sound conclusion is that "nothingness" cannot be reified into an existent. Thus, according to this hypothesis by Weinberg, there is the tacit admission that "nothingness" was once a reified existent, and that we need to "see how far we can get" with that illogical assumption.
For any committed creationist, Johnson's argument is this: "On the contrary, the very notion of 'natural law' grew out of the concept of a lawmaker."
I must, myself, assume from ignorance that this is where Augustine and Plotinus had such an effect in reversing the roles of naturalistic world view to being the skeptical position of theism, as Smith alludes to in PHILO.
This "very notion," of the concept of a lawmaker, Johnson says of biology as he uses one example, "will not only survive but prosper if it turns out that genetic information really is the product of preexisting intelligence. Biologists will have to give up their dogmatic materialism and discard unproductive hypotheses like the prebiotic soup...Freed of the metaphysical chains that tie it to nineteenth-century materialism, biology can turn to the fascinating task of discovering how the intelligence embodied in the genetic information works through matter to make the organism function." [italics added] How many naturalists can argue that while it is our job to discover such nature embodied in genetic information, that this natural intelligence is not divinely created but is an act naturalistic molecules-to-man, even if he/she must maintain a belief in the supernatural creation of the molecules themselves, as many naturalists do?
Yet, for all his subjectivity, Johnson makes the astonishing declaration that, "If there really is a materialist explanation for the origin of life, or the human mind, it surely will be found by a scientist who resolutely ignores the objections of people like me and persists in looking for it."
His theme in this book may come when he writes, about the current state of naturalist knowledge, that "the managers of the enterprise may be confident that a smashing success is just around the corner," then undercutting that by saying the epistemic problem "is deciding when to stop believing [the] promises of eventual success, particularly when the managers have been successful in the past.
"How can we tell who is correct? ...the solution is not to grant the insiders the exclusive privilege of auditing themselves. I do not urge scientists to give up on any theory or research agenda until they themselves are convinced that further efforts would be fruitless."
This is why the Discovery Institute calls it "shocking [ ] to make a few superficial debater's points against design and then declare the subject closed." Johnson wants the debate. He knows as well as Quentin Smith does that most committed naturalists are "uninformed" with "unjustified true beliefs." He thinks his creationistic arguments will hold up in this increasingly de-secularized, evangelical atmosphere in which our society now exists. He's probably right.
Johnson gives us our due on the one hand, then undercuts it with the other. "In view of the cultural importance of the naturalistic worldview, however, and its status as virtually the official philosophy of government and education, there is a need for informed outsiders to point out that claims are often made in the name of science that go far beyond the available evidence." [italics added]
So Johnson also uses the word "informed" to designate himself and others like him who can defeat our arguments. But what do they use as defeators? The fall-back position of saying, "Naturalists have not proved this or that, we are going beyond our own proofs into supposition, and therefore the creationists must maintain their own belief that a blind watchmaker is not the cause of what we propose.
But he labels such attempts such as the scientist who resolutely ignores the objections of people like him and persists in looking for naturalistic proof--and finding it--attempts at working with "heuristic assumptions," or assumptions that provide help in the solution but that are not independently justifiable or provable. And yet, if they are not provable, how can the scientist who ignores critics like Johnson find that there "really is a materialist explanation for the origin of life?"
"How can we tell who is correct?" Johnson asks. "[T]he solution is not to grant the insiders the exclusive privilege of auditing themselves."
But it never has been the exclusive privilege of any science to audit itself, because every science has an impact in one way or another on the other sciences and on the arts and humanities in general, not to mention that more generalized philosophers of epistemology must set the standards. (Smith, himself, is a professor of, among other things, epistemology.)
"Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go," wrote Ayn Rand. "It is not the special sciences that teach man to think; it is philosophy that lays down the epistemological criteria of all special sciences." http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/science.html It makes one wonder what the epistemological criteria must be for Johnson's odd defence of creationism. He seems to find it in his desire for the naturalists to go on toiling, maintaining "the fiction that evolution is 'science' and creation science is 'religion;'" or that "creation science" which assumes the supernatural ought to go about attempting to prove supernaturalism; in the desire that naturalists go on "pursuing the grand project;" or that we refuse "to consider that there may be limits to what can be learned about reality through [naturalistic] methodology."
I know of no naturalist who would claim there are no limits. The state of science changes all the time, and the methodology of the twenty-first century is not the methodology of the Atomists.
No, the epistemology seems to be in the attitude that a little bit of evolutionism is not so worrysome.
To "Johnson and his ilk [a] new adaptation here, a lost adaptation there--who cares?" writes Michael Ruse in "Naturalistic Fallacy" Reason Magazine http://www.reason.com/news/show/30010.html " Rather, it is the very moral fiber of the nation that counts. Let in evolution, and pornography, abortion, and sodomy are next. Or rather, because we let in evolution, pornography, abortion, and sodomy are now. Johnson starts with an introduction to the enemy [as those] 'who assume that God exists only as an idea in the minds of religious believers [,that] humankind created God--not the other way around. In that case, rationality requires that we recognize the Creator as the imaginary being he always has been, and that we rely only on things that are real, such as ourselves and the material world of nature."
That is exactly Smith's point when he writes, "The four goals of the informed naturalist are i) retrieve naturalism from its de facto reclassification by medieval philosophers; ii) reclassify the philosophy of religion as a subfield of naturalism, viz. skepticism about naturalism, so that the position in the various fields of philosophy formerly occupied by 'the philosophy of religion' is replaced by the field 'the philosophy of naturalism;' iii) to understand in outline an actually extant version of original naturalism (Greco-Roman naturalism) that these original naturalists justifiably believed to be an informed naturalism and which contemporary informed naturalists justifiably believe is approximately the best that could be done by naturalists in the epistemic situation of Greco-Roman philosophers; and iii) A third goal is to understand in outline an actually extant version of original naturalism (Greco-Roman naturalism) that these original naturalists justifiably believed to be an informed naturalism and which contemporary informed naturalists justifiably believe is approximately the best that could be done by naturalists in the epistemic situation of Greco-Roman philosophers; [and] iv) to justifiably reformulate, and answer, the two basic ontological why-questions that medieval philosophers took over from the Greco-Roman naturalists, and which have (for the most part) remained ever since 'questions asked in the field of the philosophy of religion.' The successful accomplishments of these four tasks will restore academia to the mainstream secularization it possessed before the post-1967 breakdown in the field of philosophy."
"This retrieval [i] is also a reversal. The aim is that theism be justifiably reclassified as a subfield of naturalism, namely, as a skepticism about the basic principles of naturalism whose refutation serves to stimulate and further develop the naturalist program. 'Philosophy of religion' disappears, to be replaced by a new subfield of naturalism, namely, 'skepticism about naturalism,' with skeptical arguments being put forth and argued against, with the aim in mind of further developing the argumentative foundations of the naturalist world-view."
"[T]he most basic answers to the ontological why-questions in a certain naturalist theory permit the two most basic why-questions, formulated in the following way, to be positively answered, [and] then that theory is explanatorily complete.
"Q1. Why do these things exist and why do these laws of nature obtain rather than some other possible things and other possible laws of nature?
"Q2. Why is it the case that there is not only nothing? (The reason for formulating the question this way will become apparent when I discuss the atomists.)" [For that discussion, please read Smith's paper in the link at the top of this blog.]
Clearly, we "uninformed" naturalists have a long way to go. Not being in academia, I have long believed that my naturalism was "justified true belief." But then, I do find myself in a different class from most naturalists who are either agnostic or have some form of belief in a creator.
My argument for naturalism runs this way, as I said above and have said on many past occasions: existence is self-sufficient, primary, the given, and is "self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic events), and only incidentally productive of man [Greek Atomism]; that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny," http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html because anything less that this denotation would require that "nothingness" be the original state of existence and it is an epistemic contradiction to insist that "nothingness" was at one time an existent, the thing that existed before existence existed. There can be no "thing" in existence before existence allowed for the conditions necessary for a "thing."
"Existence and identity are not attributes of existents, they are the existents . . . . The units of the concepts “existence” and “identity” are every entity, attribute, action, event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist." Ayn Rand: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
The deductive syllogisms by which we uninformed naturalists must come to discover are the "defeators" of our beliefs, defeators which prevent our beliefs from being "justified and true" beliefs, Smith lays out in his paper:
Where "N (a thesis). Naturalism, i.e., the thesis that there exist inanimate or animate bodies, with animate bodies being either intelligent organisms or non-intelligent organisms, but there exists nothing supernatural; then
"A (a defeated justifier). A is the argument that contemporary science and naturalist philosophy are known to be probably or certainly true, even though A includes no counterarguments against contemporary arguments for theism: or
"DA (a defeater for the justifier A). DA is a sound argument that argument A is unsound; or
"B (a defeated justifier). B is an argument that, contemporary science and naturalist philosophy, when conjoined with an evaluation of contemporary theist arguments for not-
N, (where “not-N” implies naturalism is not true) justify not-N; or
"C (an undefeated justifier for N). C is the argument that, contemporary science and naturalist philosophy, when conjoined with an evaluation of contemporary theist arguments for not-N, justify N.
"According to the informed naturalist, the predicament of at least ninety-nine percent of contemporary naturalists is represented in the following columns. We can state very briefly the arguments different philosophers believe in terms of our symbols. The mentioned belief states are arguments believed to be sound by the relevant parties.
"Belief State of Most Contemporary Naturalists
1.A.
2.A justifies N.
3.Therefore, N is justified.
Defeater Recognized by Informed Naturalists
4.DA.
4.DA.
5.DA defeats A.
6.Therefore, A does not justify N.
Belief State of Most Contemporary Theists
7.B.
7.B.
8.B justifies not-N.
9.Therefore, not-N is justified.
Defeater Recognized by Informed Naturalists
10.DB.
11.DB defeats B.
12.Therefore, B does not justify not-N.
"Since both A and B are defeated, most contemporary naturalists, as well as most contemporary theists, hold defeated beliefs about the truth-value of naturalism. The informed naturalist knows the complex argument C that constitutes the defeater of B and the justification of N, as well as meets other conditions explained later in this paper.
"Belief State of Informed Naturalists
13.C.
14.C justifies N.
15.Therefore, N is justified.
"Some naturalists believe they are informed naturalists. But whether they are in fact informed naturalists is not an issue I am addressing in this paper. This paper is a metaphilosophy of naturalism, not a philosophical argument that naturalism is true. Such philosophical arguments can be found in other papers and books. In this paper, I am (in part) characterizing the contemporary epistemic situation about naturalism from the point of view of a real or hypothetical informed naturalist."
We real and hypothetical informed naturalists have a great deal of work ahead of us.
Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
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