Scientific Naturalism

Description

Robert Hanna et al. :

"Scientific naturalism includes four basic theses:

(i) anti-mentalism and anti-supernaturalism, which says that we should reject any sort of explanatory appeal to non-physical or non-spatiotemporal entities or causal powers,

(ii) scientism, which says that the exact sciences are the paradigms of reasoning and rationality, as regards their content and their methodology alike,

(iii) materialist or physicalist metaphysics, which says that all facts in the world, including all mental facts and social facts, are either reducible to (whether identical to or “logically supervenient” on), or else strictly dependent on, according to natural laws (aka “naturally supervenient” or “nomologically supervenient” on) fundamental physical facts, which in turn are naturally mechanistic, microphysical facts, and

(iv) radical empiricist epistemology, which says that all knowledge and truths are a posteriori. The direct implication of the conjunction of these four theses is that everything which does not fit the scientific image can be safely regarded as epiphenomenal, folkloristic, quaint, superstitious, a matter of taste, or else downright naïve.

So, to summarize, scientific naturalism holds

• first, that the nature of knowledge and reality are ultimately disclosed by pure mathematics, fundamental physics, and whatever other reducible natural sciences there actually are or may turn out to be,

• second, that this is the only way of disclosing the ultimate nature of knowledge and reality, and third, that even if everything in the world, including ourselves and all things human (including language, mind, and action), cannot be strictly eliminated in favor of or reduced to fundamental physical facts, nevertheless everything in the world, including ourselves and all things human, is metaphysically grounded on and causally determined by fundamental physical facts. So scientific naturalism is committed to providing the Vienna Circle’s value-neutral set of formulae, expressing the underlying structure of the natural universe, just as architectural high modernism promised to provide a value-neutral set of design principles that express the ultimate order of the human universe.

" it is critically essential, and indeed also both morally and mortally essential, to recognize that if scientific naturalism were true, then not only would (i) philosophy as a form of inquiry, as a practice, and as a social institution, be superseded by the exact sciences, which directly entails the death-by-redundancyof philosophy itself,55 but also, (ii) because our consciousness, intentionality, free agency, normative principles, truth, ideals-&-values, etc., are all either (iia) mere eliminable myths, or (iib) fully reducible to fundamentally physical facts, or, at the very least, (iic) strictly dependent on fundamentally physical facts and thus epiphenomenal, with no causal powers of their own, then it follows that (iii) we are nothing but biological machines with a built-in strong tendency to deceive ourselves by falsely believing in the irreducible and causally efficacious nature of our own consciousness, intentionality, free agency, normative principles, truth, ideals-&-values, etc. Hence (iv) by the same token, then we would be just as likely to be self-deceived about the truth of scientific naturalism itself, as not, so it follows that we are not rationally justified in believing it, all of which directly entails (v) the death-by-self-stultification of post-classical Analytic philosophy itself.

...

It is critically essential, and indeed also both morally and mortally essential, to recognize that if scientific naturalism were true, then not only would

(i) philosophy as a form of inquiry, as a practice, and as a social institution, be superseded by the exact sciences, which directly entails the death-by-redundancyof philosophy itself,55 but also,

ii) because our consciousness, intentionality, free agency, normative principles, truth, ideals-&-values, etc., are all either (iia) mere eliminable myths, or

(iib) fully reducible to fundamentally physical facts, or, at the very least,

(iic) strictly dependent on fundamentally physical facts and thus epiphenomenal, with no causal powers of their own, then it follows that

(iii) we are nothing but biological machines with a built-in strong tendency to deceive ourselves by falsely believing in the irreducible and causally efficacious nature of our own consciousness, intentionality, free agency, normative principles, truth, ideals-&-values, etc. Hence

(iv) by the same token, then we would be just as likely to be self-deceived about the truth of scientific naturalism itself, as not, so it follows that we are not rationally justified in believing it, all of which directly entails

(v) the death-by-self-stultification of post-classical Analytic philosophy itself.

(https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/865/1597)