I have always found naturalism attractive because of its sparse nature.
a)There is one world, the natural world, that we can explore through our senses guided by reason and the scientific method.
b)The only constituents in this world are physical entities that act upon each other in set and repeatable patterns called the "laws of nature", that again can be discovered through the scientific method.
c)And finally all experienced phenomena are produced by the interactions between agglomerates of these physical entities in accordance with the laws of nature.
Its a simple philosophy, and sciences take this philosophy as the "working hypothesis" in order to investigate the world. The enormous success of the science to describe, predict and manipulate the phenomena of the world by results obtained by such investigations must be counted as a strong evidence for the plausibility of the naturalism as a worldview. At least what this shows that enormous portions of our experienced reality approximates the axioms of naturalistic philosophy well enough that one cannot tell the difference. The scientific method also provides a more detailed picture which a naturalist philosophy can use to add more meat to the question "What kind of physical world is it?" Very simply, the best concise answer that sciences provide to this question is as follows:-
i) There exists a fundamental description of the natural world that is completely general, incorporates the most universal forms of patterns or laws that act upon the most fundamental physical entities. This fundamental description is applicable everywhere under any condition.
ii) There are multiple emergent and effective descriptions that depend upon this fundamental description and are applicable for only a certain sets or groups of physical entities that are composed in certain ways from the most fundamental constitutents. These emergent descriptions follow laws or patterns that are only applicable only in certain well-defined domains. Such effective descriptions are "useful" as they highlight certain group behaviors of reality under those conditions and in which we are interested in while suppressing other information in which we are not interested in.
iii) These emergent descriptions have a nested hierarchy of applicability, generality and "distance" from the most fundamental description. They are also consistent with other and compatible with more generalized descriptions of the level "below" it. The "language" used in one effective description is often meaningless outside its domain of applicability.
iv) Our purposes and interests at a given moment determine the best way of talking about the world among this set of useful effective descriptions of the world.
I believe that together, these insights make naturalism a plausible and fruitful avenue to explore. At least I plan on brainstorming about it.
The obvious objections here would be,
a) Can naturalism really explain all the experienced realities of the world? (Consciousness, Meaning, Morals, Spiritual Experiences are given as counter-examples)
b) Is the description presented by science truly compatible with naturalism? (Anthropic Principle, First Cause, Quantum Philosophy is often given as counterexamples).
c) Is the scientific description reliable at all? (Here evolution is often the target).
What do you think folks (naturalists or otherwise), is this a good overview of naturalism, its properties and its objections?
a)There is one world, the natural world, that we can explore through our senses guided by reason and the scientific method.
b)The only constituents in this world are physical entities that act upon each other in set and repeatable patterns called the "laws of nature", that again can be discovered through the scientific method.
c)And finally all experienced phenomena are produced by the interactions between agglomerates of these physical entities in accordance with the laws of nature.
Its a simple philosophy, and sciences take this philosophy as the "working hypothesis" in order to investigate the world. The enormous success of the science to describe, predict and manipulate the phenomena of the world by results obtained by such investigations must be counted as a strong evidence for the plausibility of the naturalism as a worldview. At least what this shows that enormous portions of our experienced reality approximates the axioms of naturalistic philosophy well enough that one cannot tell the difference. The scientific method also provides a more detailed picture which a naturalist philosophy can use to add more meat to the question "What kind of physical world is it?" Very simply, the best concise answer that sciences provide to this question is as follows:-
i) There exists a fundamental description of the natural world that is completely general, incorporates the most universal forms of patterns or laws that act upon the most fundamental physical entities. This fundamental description is applicable everywhere under any condition.
ii) There are multiple emergent and effective descriptions that depend upon this fundamental description and are applicable for only a certain sets or groups of physical entities that are composed in certain ways from the most fundamental constitutents. These emergent descriptions follow laws or patterns that are only applicable only in certain well-defined domains. Such effective descriptions are "useful" as they highlight certain group behaviors of reality under those conditions and in which we are interested in while suppressing other information in which we are not interested in.
iii) These emergent descriptions have a nested hierarchy of applicability, generality and "distance" from the most fundamental description. They are also consistent with other and compatible with more generalized descriptions of the level "below" it. The "language" used in one effective description is often meaningless outside its domain of applicability.
iv) Our purposes and interests at a given moment determine the best way of talking about the world among this set of useful effective descriptions of the world.
I believe that together, these insights make naturalism a plausible and fruitful avenue to explore. At least I plan on brainstorming about it.
The obvious objections here would be,
a) Can naturalism really explain all the experienced realities of the world? (Consciousness, Meaning, Morals, Spiritual Experiences are given as counter-examples)
b) Is the description presented by science truly compatible with naturalism? (Anthropic Principle, First Cause, Quantum Philosophy is often given as counterexamples).
c) Is the scientific description reliable at all? (Here evolution is often the target).
What do you think folks (naturalists or otherwise), is this a good overview of naturalism, its properties and its objections?
