The Causal Connection Between Naturalism and Metaphysics

The more I learn about the secular philosophical science of Naturalism, the more astounded I am by the variations in its description, by the kinds of denunciations of it that come from theists, the misrepresentations of it by those theists in their criticisms--though the misrepresentations may be honestly made propositions--and by the lack of cohesiveness among the ranks of Naturalists to describe or even to defend their own scientific bearings.

All of this is leading to a breakdown of our civilization, because science in all its forms, including the value judgments of metaphysics as a science, and the epistemology by which we reach or deny such metaphysical judgements, is the underpinning of the way a civilization conducts itself--and metaphysical value judgments are definitely being denied, by some Naturalists and by some of the general population, regular people who rely on what science and philosophy tells them, for their assessment of their identity and their place in the world in which they live.

"Different contemporary philosophers interpret ‘naturalism’ differently. This disagreement about usage is no accident. For better or worse, ‘naturalism’ is widely viewed as a positive term in philosophical circles—few active philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as ‘non-naturalists’.[1] This inevitably leads to a divergence in understanding the requirements of ‘naturalism’. Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand ‘naturalism’ in a unrestrictive way, in order not to disqualify themselves as ‘naturalists’, while those who uphold stronger naturalist doctrines are happy to set the bar for ‘naturalism’ higher.[2]" [italics added] Stanford.edu http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/index.html#note-1

Philosophers who "are happy to announce themselves as ‘non-naturalists’" are theists, which in and of itself is not problematic for the science of philosophy (nor for the philosophy of science,) nor for that matter for those Naturalists who know how and when to defend their science. Most of the important philosophers in Western history--with Augustine standing out predominately in the early lead--have been theologists. But vying to replace naturalism is the field of theistic philosophy called "theistic realism."

"Phillip Johnson, one of the founders of the intelligent design movement, has proposed an alternative form of reasoning to that used by modern scientists. He refers to his form of reasoning as "theistic realism", while the alternative could be called "empirical naturalism". Allen MacNeill http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2008/07/phillip-johnson-theistic-realism.html

It is no wonder that "Different [ ] philosophers interpret ‘naturalism’ differently." The traditional philosophic science of Naturalism, which would seem to carry the connotation of "scientific" when compared to anything containing theism, cannot even be called "scientific naturalism" without careful consideration. That term has been usurped, it seems by "theistic realists", who prefer to call plain, old, traditional and objective Naturalism by the prefix of "scientific" so that they can berate Naturalism, when the mood strikes them, over the issue of the matter/spirit dualism.

"Just what is scientific naturalism (hereafter, naturalism)? Succinctly put, it is the view that the spatio-temporal universe established by scientific forms of investigation is all there is, was, or ever will be. Brains and buffaloes exist (for instance), but minds and moral values must not, because they are invisible to the five senses and therefore invisible to scientific enquiry." [italics added] J. P. Moreland http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000872.html

But this is where the theists want to put Naturalists: right smack in the position of appearing to deny that a soul can reside within the human infrastructure of mind and body. Some Naturalists do deny it. Not all do. It is as unfair to put all Naturalists into this stereotype as it is to call all believers in Christ by the stereotype of "right-wing born-again evangelicals." The defense of this senseless attack on the matter of dualism is plain to see when it can as easily be said that "the five senses" are "invisible and therefore invisible to scientific enquiry." But we go on investigating the senses all the same.

Just as the senses can be felt within the body, so can the conscience and the soul and all emotions be felt within the body; but they, too, are "invisible." I know of no Naturalist who would deny the appearance of a conscience or of emotions within the consciousness of the mind. It is, however, plain to see that some Naturalists appeal to the chemical/electrical actions of the body in determining the nature of thought and of emotion and mind.

This, however, appears to be reactionary, an attempt to distance themselves from any connection however tenuous to knowledge that emotions have rational attachments to metaphysical values. Naturalism that denies the mind is more than chemical/electrical reactions that can be predicted by causes also deny much, if any, importance to metaphysics. Such reactions of denial are not mainstream else this would not be the extremist position. We would be the extremists, we who do not deny the mind is more than simply biology acting naturally. Of course, that is precisely what the mind is, but not to the denial of free will in the determination of what goes on in the mind.

These who oppose anything but empirical causal relationships in human emotions, deny metaphysics any importance in human thoughts and ideals, where such metaphysical values are accepted by mainstream Naturalists and theists alike as the very cause of the emotions these reactionaries are trying to determine as merely empirically caused.

And yet, what is sometimes called "theistic realism" is also called "Creation Science," an oxymoron if ever there was one. Impartial, "empirical" naturalism is sometimes called "Representational Naturalism" by theists. (It would seem that any line of thought, any "label" they can come up with to split the field of Naturalism within its own ranks, is within their arsenal of tools with which to destroy Naturalism.)

"The representational naturalist holds that knowledge and intentionality are entirely natural phenomena, explicable in terms of causal relations between brain states and the represented conditions. [ ] Since knowledge is a form of success, this relation must involve a form of reliability, an objective tendency for beliefs formed in similar ways to represent the world accurately. [ ] Knowledge could then be identified with true beliefs formed by processes whose proper functions are fulfilled in normal circumstances." [italics added] Robert C. Koons http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/arn/koons/rk_incompatibilitynatreal.htm (In fairness, it does not appear that Koons himself is a theist realist.)

But in Koon's own words, "at present, our best scientific picture of the world is an essentially materialistic one, with no reference to causal agencies other than those that can be located within space and time." In other words, the mind, its thoughts, our emotions and our conscience and our soul and even our consciousness are outside the purview of science because they are "invisible" empirical science.

Such "true beliefs" come in two varieties: justified and unjustified, or "informed" and "uninfomed," according to Quentin Smith. http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/08/loss-of-secularism-in-naturalism-part-2.html

Koons, however, does not appear to be a theist, nor does he appear to be "uninformed." He argues that Naturalism and Scientific Realism are incompatible. He makes a case that "even though we have no reason to think that the origin of our aesthetic attunement to the structure of the universe is mysteriously prior to experience, there remains the fact that experience has attuned us to something, and this something runs throughout the most fundamental laws of nature. Behind the blurrin' and buzzin' confusion of data, we have discovered a consistent aesthetic behind the various fundamental laws."

But the most comprehensive definition of "naturalism" to my way of thinking was written by B.A.G. Fuller http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou00985 http://www.enotes.com/classical-medieval-criticism/parmenides/b-g-fuller-essay-date-1923?print=1 and published in D.D.Rune's "Dictionary of Philosophy" in 1942. To my way of thinking, Fuller's assessment contains this aesthetic. I have never doubted that it was contained within, and it helped lead me to the aesthetic deduction that is the thesis of my book, "The Single Intelligible Object." Fuller describes the aesthetics of the "SIO" this way:

"Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but 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; 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

To my way of thinking, there is no equivocation about the meaning of classical, Atomistic, secular, impartial and "empirical" science of Naturalism, neither epistemic equivocation nor metaphysical; nor as a basis for investigating all other sciences, because it acts with the awareness that proof of God might turn up and become part of the evidence discovered in the impartial search for truth. (It does not have a single solitary belief in the whole wide world that such proof of God would ever turn up, and it is not the Naturalist's job to go looking for it; but if found, it would not be denied.) "Theistic realism," or "Creation science" begins with the presumption that God exists, and goes looking for every piece of evidence that is left open to question, so that it can argue that since the evidence does not overwhelmingly disprove God's existence, it must be allowed to be argued that God's presence is a given "because everything in nature necessarily needs a creation."

It is one thing to have a justified belief that everything in existence must have had a creation, though Fuller's and Rand's explanations deny any such creation. It is entirely another matter to begin from the reference that God as creator is the given and then go looking for evidence of that position using "an alternative form of reasoning." A "scientific" epistemology that begins with the assumption of supernaturalism is flawed from its very basis, but that does not make a justified believe in God flawed. I understand perfectly how rational men can believe in God. I cannot find the justification for it in my own life; as a matter of fact, I find the opposite justification.

But a science that begins with the assumption of supernaturalism by using "an alternative form of reasoning" is introducing pure theology into a secular undertaking. Theology is theology and science is science.

Nor is there anything in Fuller's definition to exclude the acceptance of mind on the metaphysical plane, and there is everything in it to support it. "[H]uman life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature..." Fuller did not leave out the causative elements of Naturalism on the moral and spiritual aspects of Homo sapiens sapiens; he left open the door to the integration of "mind" as a metaphysical element "in the ordinary operations of nature."

But Koons makes an appeal to the reactionary position, when he says "our best scientific picture of the world is an essentially materialistic one, with no reference to causal agencies other than those that can be located within space and time." This leave completely out of the picture any notion of soul, spirit, conscience, or emotion except as "the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/ He might as well claim that because emotions and the soul are invisible to science that they cannot be determined to exist except as chemical/electrical events within the human empirical infrastructure.

If Naturalism is attacked by theists for its reliance on a scientific framework that is exclusive of the supernatural as part of the framework except where it may objectively be so discovered, then it will come as a shock to theists to learn that none other than the atheist philosopher Ayn Rand argued thoroughly and epistemically for the recognition of the existence of soul, conscience, and emotions.

"Emotions," she wrote in "The Virtue of Selfishness", "are the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss."

She included that these value judgments are "the programming consist[ing] of the values his mind chooses. [M]an chooses his values by a conscious process of thought—or accepts them by default, by subconscious associations, on faith, on someone’s authority, by some form of social osmosis or blind imitation. Emotions are produced by man’s premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly."

In "Philosophy: Who Needs It", Rand said, "If you default, if you don’t reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance—and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted."

This is the explanation described by metaphysics, the very metaphysics that the reactionaries of Naturalism reject. These reactionaries cannot be called "extremists." Rand herself was an extremist, and to the best of my ability I consider myself an extremist. Giving to any act of discurse less than the act requires does not serve the argument or the science. Extremism is not a vice; extremism is covering all your bases. But these reactionaries may rightly be said to "diverge in understanding the requirements of ‘naturalism’." Stanford.edu And the theists may rightly be said to be understanding them correctly, but incorrectly addressing them as though they were the mainstream of Naturalist thinking.

"Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments" [Stanform.edu] are not going to deny the matter/spirit dualism. Nor will those who refuse to shut the door on all open , rational, and objective inquiry.

"There is no [ ] dichotomy between man’s reason and his emotions—provided he [ ] discover[s] the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come," Rand said in her 1964 interview with "Playboy." "[I]f his premises are wrong, he corrects them, [ ] he has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, [ ] emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. [ ] This relationship cannot be reversed [i.e., ] take[ing] his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect..." [italics added] http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html

Theist science by any name or description cannot be allowed to destroy Naturalism on the false basis of stereotyping all Naturalists as reactionaries who deny that Man can place a metaphysical face on the chemical/electrical forces of nature that are the material--but not the cause--of his emotions. Just as Man can feel the effects of his five "invisible" senses, just as he can feel the "invisible" loves, jealousies, fears and other emotions that describe his mental states, so he can feel his soul as the emotional end result of his value choices in play within his conscience. Reversing the cause-and-effect is an epistemic error, but it may be one that is deliberately reactionary, against the theists who deliberately choose the epistemic error of accepting a creator as the given.

Metaphysics is no more "visible" to science than any other value judgment, yet value judgments are an integral part of the standards--indeed, they are the standards--by which every scientist of every ilk conducts his business. Value judgements are the standards by which every human makes any choice of one thing over another. Value judgements determine the direction in which he will turn his will, because it certainly one thing to be the Good Samaritan, and another to be the uninterested and immorally refrained witnesses to a beating, as we ourselves have been witness to on nightly, daily, and twenty-four-hour new broadcasts.

This reactionism on the part of some Naturalists (of whom some might better be identified as vehement anti-theists rather than Naturalists,) are afraid of making Rand's "causal connection in reverse," taking emotions as the cause and their minds as the passive effect. This attitude of reactionism is what such "bad Samaritans" are made of. They are being taught that emotions are merely chemical/electrical mechanisms of the body that say nothing about deeply human, metaphysical value judgements; and instead of rushing in to help the truly needy at their moment of desperation, they misunderstand that what they are witnessing is indeed going on right in front of them and that it will not go away if they close their eyes and let their emotions dissipate. (Or, they are aware of Rand's "rational egoism" and believe they are her adherents, but are among the many who confuse that "egoism"with such total selfishness that they believe it is against their interests to help other humans in their moment of need. At least call 9-1-1, for god's sake.)

It is the badly mistaken belief in consciousness as the cause of all that exists--which is the very act of getting Rand's causal connection reversed--that leads the reactionaries to their denial of metaphysics; and this belief in consciousness as the cause of all that exists is the denial we see in passive witnesses to acts of crime and of great human suffering.

This causal reversal and the acts of people staring blindly at acts of crime are inextricably connected, and as it is the dedicated task of this Academy to maintain the rationality of Naturalism, I will be looking for more evidence of this connection. It seems vitally important to understand how Naturalism in its reactionary mode, the denial of metaphysical values by the public because of this reactionism, and the disintegration of our civilization as witnessed by the horrible, violent, and insane acts of crime going on, are inextricably connected.

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 ®

The Loss of Secularism in Naturalism, Part 1

Between the blocks of time I use writing this blog, answering questions on Yahoo Answers (under an assumed moniker,) and attending to the more mundane aspects of living such as feeding the wild animals right outside our back window, mowing the grass, preparing dinner for my partner and myself, attending AA meetings or watching 24 hour new networks or my favorite dramas, I read.

It has come to my attention that naturalism is a bigger deal in the world of academics than I could have imagined. I am not in formal academics; I have no "classroom" but this one and Yahoo Answers. Now I discover, through an article written by a local, esteemed philisopher that naturalism as a secular activity in academia was once the norm, whereas now it is being pushed out by the arguments of philosophical theists who argue that existence cannot be self-sufficient and the given.

Dr. Quentin Smith http://www.wmich.edu/philosophy/index.php?content=smith_faculty_profile writes that naturalist philosophers desire to search for knowledge for its own sake, going so far as to claim they want the truth "whatever the truth happens to be (e.g., be it naturalism or theism)." "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism", http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm

But, Smith writes, because academics in the second half of the 20th century had, for the most part, become secularized, that all of academia, aside from a few exceptions, was in the search for objective truth whether it turned out to be naturalism or theism.

"[D]epartments of theology or religion aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, not to develop arguments against naturalism."

As many of my readers are also users of Yahoo Answers, let me state that one of the big debates has been why the atheists assume such a large role in the Religion and Spirituality forum, and why the so-called philosophy students in the Philosophy forum often argued so vigorously for theist answers. The atheists in the R&S forum often made the claim, as did I, that even atheists have souls, that we have "spirituality," and that when not prodding the theists to make them angry, the goal was simply to set the record right, to state that theists didn't have all the answers, that religions were "set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit," as the American patriot Thomas Paine stated so boldly in his book, "The Age of Reason." (1794)

While all this and more may be true, it seems there is more going on being the curtains of academia that lead to the face off between the theists and the seculars. What this is, writes Smith, is apparently not even known explicitly by some of the academic seculars.

"Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism [ ] began to sweep through the philosophical community...", in effect, developing the very arguments for creationism that will lead to the death of naturalism if we naturalists don't wake up and begin taking back the epistemic high road.

Realist theists may be identified in this context as anyone who proposes a rational theory of creationism or intelligent design. Rational theism, according to Phillip E Johnson in his book, "Reason in the Balance," is true knowledge (!), starting with the belief of God as the Creator. "Theistic realism relies on a God that is real, personal, and acting in the world through mechanistic creationism." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_realism

To demonstrate how low the realist theists believe naturalism has gone, and perhaps not without some validity if we are indeed losing ground to their arguments, a site called "the evangelical outpost" (sic) http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/ finds plenty to laugh at concerning their opposition.

"Christian thinkers ranging from the profound to the banal have argued that philosophical naturalism is internally inconsistent and contradictory," it posts, calling naturalism a "naked emperor." http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001271.html "But we Christian critics now have a handful of unwitting allies in our cause. A small group of atheist philosophers, including Daniel Dennett and Brian Leiter, have instituted a new organization that will prove to be our best ally in the effort to expose the self-refuting philosophy: [ ] The website provides such a parody of naturalistic ideas that it couldn't be anything other than an elaborate prank."

Yet I assure you it is no "elaborate prank." The esteemed list of contributors to the site, called The Center for Naturalism http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/ would convince anyone of that. (They are listed on the home page.)

"Naturalism is the understanding that there is a single, natural world as shown by science, and that we are completely included in it," states the Center. That much is probably as easy to accept for the theists as for any atheist. But the next words are hardly the words of science, but of a type of humanism that seems more like the victim falling on his sword rather than as a leader in scientific thinking.

"Naturalism holds that everything we are and do is connected to the rest of the world," says the Center, without any scientific description of that "connection." It could just as easily refer to the butterfly effect. "Each of us is an unfolding natural process [ ] and seeing just how we are caused gives us power and control, while encouraging compassion and humility."

Is this an apologetic for what naturalism in science is supposed to be?

I was never under the impression that this was the nature of naturalism. My understanding of it is that it is the scientific view that existence is self-sufficient, the given, describable in axiomatic concepts and defendable as the default position versus some theory of ex nihilo where "nothingness" was at one time the condition of existence. My understanding of naturalism has nothing to do with social policies "encouraging compassion and humanity." While those may be outstanding values to encourage in the proper conditions, it strays far from a black-and-white, concretized description of naturalism as an epistemological position derived from logic.

Everytime some young student in Yahoo asks where the world or the universe came from, whether challenging the naturalists or seeking a sincere answer, the question automatically takes the default position that "nothingness" was once the conditon of the universe.

There are contradictions inherent in this default position, and for the rest of the week it will be the task of this blog to uncover those contradictions. In the mean time, until tomorrow, let me paste the definition of Naturalism from the Dictionary of Philosophy. http://www.ditext.com/runes/index.html This definition was written by B.A.G. Fuller, a Harvard professor whose clarity of grammar and syntax rivals that of Thomas Jefferson, and is just as often as difficult to digest on the first reading.

"Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but 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; 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."

This has always been my working definition of naturalism, and I see nothing in it that refers even implicitly to an apologetic for its nature, and certainly nothing even remotely close to being social policy for compassion and humanity.

"And how," asks Quentin Smith, "have naturalist philosophers reacted to what some committed naturalists might consider as 'the embarrassment' of belonging to the only academic field that has allowed itself to lose the secularization it once had? Some naturalists wish to leave the field..."

That does not surprise me. What surprises me is that naturalism has lost the secularization it once had.

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 ®