Methodological Naturalism: What it is (and how to make it a vital part of your love life)!

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I'm not sure what you mean there. Inter-subjective verification by definition is the verification of something by two or more subjects or persons. If you and I were the last survivors on earth, we could indeed inter-subjectively verify things. Perhaps you meant to say, "If one of us was the last survivor on earth, and hence, inter-subjective verification was impossible...."

Sorry, I miswrote. I should have written you or I, not you and I. My point was that we could still do science without intersubjective verification, albeit not as well.

In my opinion, there would be no logical reason why methodological materialism would be imposed on a sole survivor. The survivor might choose to impose it on themselves, but that decision would not be logically forced upon them. As the sole survivor, he or she could simply redefine science as "Anything I myself can verify". That is, as based on subjective verification alone. Redefining science in that manner would be permitted because the only person he or she would need to convince of something would be themselves, and that would not necessarily require them to restrict their inquiry to methodological materialism.

But wouldn't that sole survivor be subject to the same methodological limitations whatever he or she believed? His or her science would still be confined physical reality whether anything more existed or not. Nothing would need to be believed or known for that to remain true, right?

 

[Sunstone]

But wouldn't that sole survivor be subject to the same methodological limitations whatever he or she believed? His or her science would still be confined physical reality whether anything more existed or not. Nothing would need to be believed or known for that to remain true, right?

So far as I can see, our sole survivor would need to make a choice to confine his or her "science" to physical reality because they could simply confine their science to "Whatever they observe to be true", instead. So, for instance, they might have a mystical experience that they interpret as "clearly an experience of god", and thus come to assert that, "since science is whatever I observe to be true, and since I have observed god to be true, then science proves the existence of god". Such a claim would be about a presumably non-physical entity, but there would be no logical requirement for them to limit themselves to physical discoveries.

 

[David T]

Lots of words for "OMG a car schematic" I actually don't get the excitement or threat. I do get the stupidity of it all though.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So far as I can see, our sole survivor would need to make a choice to confine his or her "science" to physical reality because they could simply confine their science to "Whatever they observe to be true", instead. So, for instance, they might have a mystical experience that they interpret as "clearly an experience of god", and thus come to assert that, "since science is whatever I observe to be true, and since I have observed god to be true, then science proves the existence of god".

We might be talking about different things when we refer to doing science. Our sole survivor has no choice but to confine his or her science to the investigation of physical reality, whatever he or she believes or is thinking.

 

[sayak83]

Spoiler: off topic digression

I make a distinction between the self, which is the observer of the phenomena of consciousness, and their source. Which of the phenomena of consciousness are put there by the self? Possibly none. Where does thirst come from. I feel thirsty and using my will, go get a drink. That message came from outside of consciousness - unconscious and invisible circuits in the hypothalamic osmostat. Isn't that a different thing from the self?

When I refer to the self, I am referring to the thing experiencing the mind, and experiencing itself experiencing the mind (self-awarenesss). This excludes not only the material sources of these phenomena including brain centers whose actions are invisible to us (we are unconscious of them) until they are phenomenologically reported to the self (as when we remember something, which can be described as something from the unconscious memory circuits bubbling up into consciousness again) but also conscious phenomena, which are the object of the self's (the subject's) apprehension.

The self and the unconscious activities of the mind are not disconnected, but they seem like distinct things to me.

And it is from this perspective that we can conceive of separating the will from the self. The illusion, according to those who suggest that there may be one, is that the self is the author of its desires. We know that it didn't make itself thirsty or want a drink. This urge definitely comes from outside of the theater of consciousness, the unconscious (extra-conscious), and there is nothing free about having that desire. One is free to obey it, and if another part of the unconscious informs the self that this would be an inopportune time to do so, one instruction may supersede the other with neither being freely.

This may be what is happening, and what is being called the illusion of free will as if it is the self making the decisions when it is not.

I think the relationship between the self as you define and the rest of the mind is that between the board of directors and the entire company. If one looks at the activity patterns inside a company, very few truly start at the director level, even though that how its presented to the outside when communicating company decisions.

 

[Sunstone]

Our sole survivor has no choice but to confine his or her science to the investigation of physical reality, whatever he or she believes or is thinking.

That seems like a curious position to me. Why do you think so?

 

[Sunstone]

And i'm still trying to remember the differences of metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism when i see the words.

Metaphysical naturalism: The notion that only natural things exist, and that supernatural things do not exist.

Methodological naturalism neither affirms nor denies that supernatural or metaphysical things exist.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Lots of words for "OMG a car schematic" I actually don't get the excitement or threat. I do get the stupidity of it all though. View attachment 20884

I think there is an 'o' ring missing - and several litres of fluid.

 

[blü 2]

"the notion that scientific methods of inquiry confine science to the study of what is empirically detectable."

The alternative would be to proceed without examinable evidence at all, since the whole record of the supernatural / spiritual / immaterial is made up of subjective reports, dreams, meditations, impressions, subjectively or situationally attractive ideas, old stories, the same kit as folklore.

And without evidence, scientific method takes seriously only evidence-derived hypotheses.

metaphysical naturalism neither affirms nor denies the existence of supernatural or metaphysical things. It merely recognizes that they are (at least currently) outside the scope of any scientific methods of inquiry.

Then they're a step ahead of me. I don't have a definition of 'supernatural' (&c) that would allow me to identify a real example if I found one. You don't need such a definition for imaginary examples, but once they're said to have objective existence, without that definition no one knows what they're actually talking about.

de Vries wanted to provide people with a way of thinking about the foundation of the sciences that did not require them to assume metaphysical naturalism -- which, as we have seen, denies the existence of a transcendent god or gods.

Since I assume he meant real gods, he must have had that definition. Dang, I can't find it mentioned anywhere.

The most vocal critics of methodological naturalism are proponents of creationism or intelligent design. A frequent argument is that methodological naturalism somehow does not apply to sciences that rely even in part on historical evidence -- such as the fossil record.

Ahm, I'd say we need a distinction here. A fossil is evidence of past events, events which may or may not be usefully called 'historical'. But the fossil itself and the evidence it yields, are present, not past, so I wouldn't call them historical evidence.

Historical evidence is more in the style of, say, the written reports and etchings of the Great Comet of 1680, or mention of eclipses in ancient records, used these days to get tentative dates for historical events.

 

[David T]

I think there is an 'o' ring missing - and several litres of fluid.

you religious fanatic!

Jokes aside, EXACTLY!!!!! I recently posted in another thread of the straw man arguing with the strawman. The straw man says "there are no gaps" the other strawman answers back "what about gaps".

It seems that as we moved from writing with no gaps between words to gaps between words to make it easier to read people got really confused. Apparently gaps in writing is like twitter.

 

[Mock Turtle]

you religious fanatic!

That's a first for me.

 

[Ponder This]

The logical structure of the sciences crucially rests on the principle of reliable inter-subjective verification (RISV). RISV means that something, such as a fact, is capable of being reliably verified by two or more persons.

If we ask why scientific methods of inquiry confine the sciences to the study of what is empirically detectable, then the answer is the principle of RISV. Only things that are empirically detectable can be RISVed, and the sciences deal only in things that can be RISVed. If it cannot be -- at least in principle -- RISVed, then it ain't science.

Or put differently, since the scientific methods of inquiry crucially rest on the principle of RISV, they presuppose methodological naturalism - at least currently. .

The above section of your post confused me.
First of all, anyone can do science. The presence of other people is not required. Other people can verify the science of others by conducting their own experiments. When people agree on the explanations and results, they create the body of knowledge that we refer to as science.

As to the question of what science can be applied to, the answer is: anything for which an experiment can be designed and conducted. Science can be conducted on dreams (and, in fact, has been conducted on dreams) and other subjective phenomena.

RISV only affects what the scientific community as a whole accepts.

We might be talking about different things when we refer to doing science. Our sole survivor has no choice but to confine his or her science to the investigation of physical reality, whatever he or she believes or is thinking.

I agree that it may be that we need to more precisely define the meaning of science in this thread.
As to the question of a lone survivor's experiences of God. The only relevant question is the design and replication of experiments. What is an 'experience of God'? By definition an 'experience' occurs whether or not it has "physical reality". Experiences are the basis upon which we construct experiments. The Scientific Method codifies how to go about doing this. We can, for example, test whether or not an experience is 'physical' by creating a 'physical' test for it.

A 'physical' thing would be something perceived through the five (physical) senses as opposed to being 'perceived' through the mind. Dreams are things 'perceived' in the primarily in mind and not the physical senses (I do not mean to infer that it is impossible to perceive dreams in other 'physical' ways).

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So far as I can see, our sole survivor would need to make a choice to confine his or her "science" to physical reality because they could simply confine their science to "Whatever they observe to be true", instead. So, for instance, they might have a mystical experience that they interpret as "clearly an experience of god", and thus come to assert that, "since science is whatever I observe to be true, and since I have observed god to be true, then science proves the existence of god". Such a claim would be about a presumably non-physical entity, but there would be no logical requirement for them to limit themselves to physical discoveries.

I don't consider that doing science. There is nothing demonstrable or repeatable about having and interpreting a mystical experience. It's basically the same as a wakeful dream.

My points were that anybody doing science is confined to the study of observable objects, processes, and forces - they are methodoligical physicalists perforce - and that a sole survivor could do that without intersubjective verification.

I agree that it may be that we need to more precisely define the meaning of science in this thread.
As to the question of a lone survivor's experiences of God. The only relevant question is the design and replication of experiments. What is an 'experience of God'? By definition an 'experience' occurs whether or not it has "physical reality". Experiences are the basis upon which we construct experiments. The Scientific Method codifies how to go about doing this. We can, for example, test whether or not an experience is 'physical' by creating a 'physical' test for it.

A 'physical' thing would be something perceived through the five (physical) senses as opposed to being 'perceived' through the mind. Dreams are things 'perceived' in the primarily in mind and not the physical senses (I do not mean to infer that it is impossible to perceive dreams in other 'physical' ways).

I think that you're saying the same thing I did. Science is the method by which we investigate the workings of physical reality. It is not limited to people with telescopes, microscopes and test tubes. We all do it every day when we examine physical evidence and arrive at conclusions about our local reality, such as that it is safe to cross the street now.

 

[blü 2]

I agree that it may be that we need to more precisely define the meaning of science in this thread.
As to the question of a lone survivor's experiences of God. The only relevant question is the design and replication of experiments. What is an 'experience of God'?

And this is where, since we're doing science, we need that hard definition of 'God' (and 'spiritual' and 'immaterial' and 'supernatural') because without that definition we have no idea of what we might be looking for, no test to tell us whether we've found an example or not.

In this respect, 'God' is no different to the Higgs boson.

By definition an 'experience' occurs whether or not it has "physical reality". Experiences are the basis upon which we construct experiments. The Scientific Method codifies how to go about doing this. We can, for example, test whether or not an experience is 'physical' by creating a 'physical' test for it.

But the alternative to 'physical' is 'imaginary'. Things either have objective existence or they exist only as concepts in brains.

A 'physical' thing would be something perceived through the five (physical) senses as opposed to being 'perceived' through the mind. Dreams are things 'perceived' in the primarily in mind and not the physical senses (I do not mean to infer that it is impossible to perceive dreams in other 'physical' ways).

But since humans are the only sources of revelation and since there are countless religions and views of religion, why would we think such things 'perceived' by the brain were anything other than imaginings? I agree we can enquire into imaginings as a topic, but that tells us about humans, not about real gods and devils and their friends.

 

[Sunstone]

The above section of your post confused me.
First of all, anyone can do science. The presence of other people is not required. Other people can verify the science of others by conducting their own experiments. When people agree on the explanations and results, they create the body of knowledge that we refer to as science.

As to the question of what science can be applied to, the answer is: anything for which an experiment can be designed and conducted. Science can be conducted on dreams (and, in fact, has been conducted on dreams) and other subjective phenomena.

RISV only affects what the scientific community as a whole accepts.

I'm not at all clear what you're getting at. To me, you are both saying and not saying that "the presence of other people is not required" to do science. For instance, "The presence of other people is not required". "When other people agree on the explanations and results, they create the body of knowledge that we refer to as science." Do you see how those two statements might seem to contradict each other? And those aren't the only statements that seem to contradict each other. Your whole three paragraphs appear to be one contradiction after another. Could you please clarify your position?

Now, the notion that "the presence of other people is not required to do science" seems mythical to me. Do you know of any science that in practice is conducted outside of a community of scientists? If so, please point to it.

What do you think makes a science a science? I mean ultimately.

Does your definition of a science exclude pseudo-sciences from being sciences without making any reference at all to a community of scientists -- such as, for instance, without making any reference to peer review, etc.

The Scientific Method codifies how to go about doing this.

What do you mean by "The Scientific Method"? Who determines what is "The Scientific Method" and what is not "The Scientific Method"? What criteria is used to determine it?

 

[Sunstone]

I don't consider that doing science. There is nothing demonstrable or repeatable about having and interpreting a mystical experience. It's basically the same as a wakeful dream.

My points were that anybody doing science is confined to the study of observable objects, processes, and forces - they are methodoligical physicalists perforce - and that a sole survivor could do that without intersubjective verification.

You keep saying, in effect, that the sole survivor would be compelled to do science according to a certain method. I keep asking what would compel them to do it according to that method. The best you've been able to answer my question so far is that you don't "consider anything else to be science." Can you see why your answer is inadequate?

Forget all about sole survivors for a moment. What, if anything, compels a scientist working today to do science according to certain specific methods or procedures?

Here's a closely related question: What to you is the demarcation between science and non-science? What distinguishes a science from a non science? A science from a pseudo-science?

I do not mean immediately, I mean ultimately.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You keep saying, in effect, that the sole survivor would be compelled to do science according to a certain method. I keep asking what would compel them to do it according to that method. The best you've been able to answer my question so far is that you don't "consider anything else to be science." Can you see why your answer is inadequate?

If there is only one scientific method, one is compelled to use it or he is not doing science. Nobody is forced to use the scientific method, but if one chooses another method, it's not science even if the person thinks it is or calls it science.

What, if anything, compels a scientist working today to do science according to certain specific methods or procedures?

Nothing compels a person to use the scientific method. If we call a person a scientist, it ought to be because they are using that method - initial observations, hypothesis formation, observation (perhaps through experimentation), induction, etc.. If one is instead explaining mystical experiences, for example, it's not science. Neither is interpreting chicken bones, nor predicting futures based the positions of the stars.

I think that the trouble we are having is that you seem to be willing to allow people to do whatever they like and call it science. You implied by your first comment above that they could use other methods than the scientific method. Sure, they could, buut why would we consider those other methoods science?

Here's a closely related question: What to you is the demarcation between science and non-science? What distinguishes a science from a non science? A science from a pseudo-science?

The method used - the same thing that makes astronomy a science and astrology a pseudoscience. The latter begins with faith based assumptions about reality that happen to be false, and is thus an expectedly sterile endeavor - the hallmark of a wrong idea - whereas astronomy uses the scientific method, which has been spectacularly fertile.

Why is Darwin's theory considered science, but ID was called pseudoscience in an American court of law? Same answer - the latter begins with a faith based assumption, and has been sterile because in all likelihood, it is a false belief. And it doesn't matter to us that many creationists call that pseudoscience creation science. It still isn't science.

Once again, if you vary from the scientific method, it ceases to be science even if one calls it science.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Nice post, @Sunstone.

By the was, have you reread Barbara Forrest's piece recently? If so, how do you think it compares with the OP?

 

[Ponder This]

And this is where, since we're doing science, we need that hard definition of 'God' (and 'spiritual' and 'immaterial' and 'supernatural') because without that definition we have no idea of what we might be looking for, no test to tell us whether we've found an example or not.

In this respect, 'God' is no different to the Higgs boson.

In regards to a 'hard' definition of God:
I think that to conduct the experiment you do not need a complete description of God, but rather a sufficient description of God. In that sense 'God' is not different from 'Higg's Boson'. For example, the quality of being 'omniscient' is attributed to God, but it is not necessarily the case that it is necessary to know whether He is omniscient in order to conduct experiments concerning Him.

But the alternative to 'physical' is 'imaginary'. Things either have objective existence or they exist only as concepts in brains.

What is an 'experience'?

Hypothesis: If I go to sleep, then I will 'have a dream'.

Step 1: Go to sleep.
Step 2: Wake up.
Step 3: Record if you had a dream.

Repeat the experiment as many times as you want. Maybe you find that sometimes you recall a dream and sometimes you do not recall a dream.

Conduct another experiment:
Hypothesis: If I sleep for more than 4 hours I will have a dream

Or another experiment:
Hypothesis: I have a 50% chance of having a dream in each natural 24 hour sleep cycle.

and etc.

The notion that dreams 'only exist in mentation' isn't important. The 'Higg's Boson' existed 'only in mentation' before it was discovered. There is no problem with conducting scientific inquiry into things that do not immediately and apparently admit of a 'physical' or 'material' existence.

It suffices that we have experiences. Experiments are conducted to examine experiences. Arguably, if you have an experience, then it means that something 'real' has occurred even if you do not fully understand what has happened.

But since humans are the only sources of revelation and since there are countless religions and views of religion, why would we think such things 'perceived' by the brain were anything other than imaginings? I agree we can enquire into imaginings as a topic, but that tells us about humans, not about real gods and devils and their friends.

I'm not sure how the fact of our subjectivity or the existence of other religions (and views of religions) matters.

Are you asking why we would regard god and devils and their friends as having 'physical' existence? If that is the case, then we require a sufficient physical description. And we should note that our inability to see hydrogen atoms our naked eye is not sufficient to say that hydrogen atoms lack physical existence.

 

[Sunstone]

If there is only one scientific method....

Ok, let's try a new tact here. Let's assume for the moment that you are right and that there is only one scientific method. We don't need to get into all the specifics of what that method is in order to point out that one specific it must include if it is to at least resemble modern scientific inquiry is RISV (reliable inter-subjective verification).

Now, there are at least half a dozen reasons why that's so. But to keep this brief, let's just focus on one reason alone. Suppose the following exchanged occurred between two scientists:

PAULA: "If you combine sodium and chlorine according to a certain procedure, you will get salt."

QUINCY: "Great! Let me see if I can reliably inter-subjectively verify that!"

PAULA: "No."

QUINCY: "What do you mean 'no'. We've always RISVed things -- at least in principle."

PAULA: "But RISV is not a necessary part of the scientific method. Therefore, you don't need to RISV my discovery that sodium and chlorine combine to produce salt in order for my discovery to be science. All you need do is take it on my authority that I proceeded according to the scientific method."

QUINCY: "Jolly Good! That certainly streamlines things. By the way, I scientifically proved god exists last night."

PAULA: "Oh? And how did you do that?"

QUINCY: "I had another mystical experience that I'm interpreting as an experience of god. I proceeded according to the same logic as used by field biologists when studying wolves in the wild. No need for you to verify that I experienced god. Inter-subjective verification never was a crucial part of the sciences anyway. Just take it on my word that I employed the scientific method, and thus demonstrated via it the existence of god."

PAULA: "Excellent! Later on today, I aim to scientifically demonstrate that turkey tastes better than beef."

Remove RISV from the method or methods of the sciences and you render the whole enterprise unrecognizable.