What is Metaphysical Naturalism? Part One continued

What is Metaphysical Naturalism? Part One continued

back What is Metaphysical Naturalism?
Part One

Why do I bother to compare the views of a naturalist, no matter the kind he is, and the views of someone who is obviously a creationist? Because it is the reductiveness of ideas like Clark's that creationists resist and denounce, and which makes of them fierce critics when naturalists attempt to codify their scientific findings, or use them to criticize the "fictional supernatural agency" traditionally called "soul" and "free will".

I said that in the sense that scientific naturalism reduces everything to quantifiable natural and identifiable physiological traits, at least in living species as opposed to explaining "existence" itself, I am also a reductionist.

But the epistemic theme of the reductivist is to "drop the soul and free will [in order to be] rid of the fictional supernatural agency that blocks true explanations of phenomena."

Metaphysical naturalism is much simpler, and accepts that soul and free will exist and have causes and effects and therefore also have metaphysical value, just as a stomach ache is not merely a buildup of acid from a fictional medical agency, but that the buildup has metaphysical importance for the health of the individual, if only of an extremely transitory nature. On the other hand, it may be something like a peptic ulcer, which is obviously not a fictional medial agency.

Richard C. Carrier, writing for the "Internet Infidels", another group of naturalist writers, in the website Secular Web Library http://www.infidels.org/library/ , says "there is no need to appeal to gods or higher powers or supernatural realms or forces, and we don't believe there are any such things. That's what makes us Metaphysical Naturalists. Though we often disagree about the particulars, we all believe the evidence points to that and nothing else." Unlike Clark, Carrier offers nothing else in the specific nature of MN beyond that.

But he does say this: "In order to fulfill our mission we have become the world's leading nexus for the secular community, a neutral clearinghouse of information supporting our cause, centered above all on a wide-ranging library of secular literature online. The reason for this is simple: secularists and secular philosophy provide inherent and widespread support for Metaphysical Naturalism. So we support them in turn."

But not all secularism is metaphysical naturalism, denying the existence of the supernatural. America's Founders were Deists. Deists are some of the most devout believers in God Himself, but they denounce organized religions. They wrote and signed the Declarations of Independence and the Constitution, and with the inclusion of Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state" incorporated into it as Original Intent reading, it is an extremely secular document, not allowing for any form of intrusion by any instrument of religion. It protects all religions; it gives sway to none.

And yet, those Deists were naturalists. It is the reason they singned on to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," rather than to God Himself, as the enabler of man's secular rights. So secularism is not a good description of the nature of naturalism. Secularity means the separation of what is by nature reason, from what is by nature faith or religion. [see the comments Jefferson made concerning the intrusion of the name "Jesus" into the The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, the document he was most proud of having authored.]

But the Internet Infidels do seem to think secularity has much to do with the promotion of metaphysical naturalism, saying: "Besides Metaphysical Naturalism, however, our mission statement includes two other goals: one social, and one ethical.

"Socially, we seek an atmosophere of intellectual freedom and tolerance, for the promotion of knowledge and understanding through the avid pursuit of philosophy and the scientific enterprise. [ ] Therefore, we believe governments must be entirely neutral, favoring none in this quest. [ ] It is our dream that even people of different faiths, including nontheists, befriend each other and work together toward a better society of universal happiness, pursuing reason, science, and truth."

[There is something about the modern version of "humanism" found in most of the variations of naturalism, that makes me want to puke. They all sound like robotic beauty queens promising to work for "world peace." Is there any reason to think that people would think naturalists do not want a better society? Why state the obvious? They are not stating anything about naturalism by doing so; they are advocating altruistic, which they call "human compassion," which is altogether another issue, and much too big to be covered here. But Tom Clark's websites sound eerily similar, and he does specifically use the word "altruism".]

Carrier states the third goal of the mission of the Infidels: "Ethically, we want to uphold the dignity of humanity by embodying honesty and compassion in our pursuit of the truth. The good of mankind is our greatest goal."

As Ayn Rand pointed out, anyone using the phrase "the good of mankind" or any variation thereof, simply means to pursue an agenda of socialism of one form or another upon mankind. The Founders "conceived in liberty and justice" the promotion of the "general Welfare"; and it is not parsing phrases to say that they mean very different things.

Metaphysical naturalism as I see it, and as I apply it for my Academy, (which, by the way, is moving right along with work on a distance-learning academic program,) does not dismiss mind and soul as real entities of consciousness that are more than simply biological fuctions, like the growling of your stomach. The naturalists like those described above, who believe the physiology of how the brain creates consciousness, and thus what we traditionally call "soul," is tantamount to claiming the growling of the stomach is the soul, rather than that which we perceive in the seat of our emotions.

In other words, early ancestors of modern man who first identified what we call soul, could instead have interpreted the growling of the stomach to be God's connection to us, rather than deciding it was what we do actually call the soul. After all, "More and more, biology and neuroscience show that the brain and body do everything that the soul was supposed to do," writes Clark.

So, therefor, the soul with which we are intimately familiar on an emotional level, was misidentified as being something more than the mechanics of our physiology. So, therefor, our growling stomach could have been identified as our soul, in which case Clark would be claiming that our intestines "do everything that the soul was supposed to do."

A few months back, I was having a conversation with Tibor Machan http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/tibor-machan.html by email. Near the end of the conversation, after I sent him the original version of the Academy's "Strong" Position on Naturalism, below, he wrote back:

"Thanks for this. I agree. I have identified myself as a naturalist but for the bit of concern with this: "but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic [?] events)..." As far as I understand things, human conduct is not well understood in deterministic--other than self-deterministic--terms."

I agree with Machan's assessment of human conduct. It is not deterministic. But Clark and others make it out to be so, by claiming this: "[S]eeing just how we are caused (by our genetic endowment, upbringing, and social environments), [ ] we see that we aren’t the ultimate originators of ourselves or our behavior, [and] we can’t take ultimate credit or blame for what we do. [ ] People don't create themselves, so responsibility for their character and behavior isn't ultimately theirs, but is distributed over the many factors that created them."

It is quite deterministic to say we are caused by what is out of our control and so therefor we are not responsible for our actions. The definition of determinism is "The doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law." [Dict. of Phil; Runes; http://www.ditext.com/runes/d.html]

Human conduct is not what many naturalists make it out to be. Man does have free will, and is, ultimately, responsible for his own actions and can, in spite of everything in the world, remake himself in his own image. That is why the description below says the "world-process is deterministic." The "process" of man's actions are "guided entirely" by the laws of nature regarding man; but man is sui generis and intellectually does not have to follow any rules but the ones he makes for himself.

The Academy's Strong Definition of Naturalism , Fully Explained with Caveats.

Given the divided nature of the many categories of "Naturalism," which include "strong" to "weak" definitions, it is necessary to state the position of this Academy as "strong;" and just as necessary to add the caveats at the end in order to distinguish this Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism from other metaphysical schools and schools of naturalism. But I would add that the terms "strong" and "weak" are unnecessarily vague, and that the categorical names are better, names such as metaphysical; teleonatural; ontological; Christian; humanist; deterministic; non-deterministic; reductive; non-reductive; etc.

Amended 9.12.08

"Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological,

i mechanical,ii and moral argumentsiii, 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 neither mechanistic nor anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic* events), and only accidentally productive of man; that human life as physical, mental, moral and spiritual phenomena, are ordinary natural events attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of the laws of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified by non-reductive monism, [ http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/09/non-reductive-monism.html ] without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny"--

(amended from B.A.G.Fuller http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html see Naturalism)

(*Tychism: any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos; [ibid])

[caveats]

--AND that

this description neither explicitly nor implicitly exlcudes the existence of the human soul, nor of free will, when:"'soul' is a "veridical perception"** of consciousness;" and "'free will' is the mind’s freedom "to think or not;" (Ayn Rand)

AND that
"consciousness" is "the faculty of awareness—the faculty of [veridically] perceiving that which exists;" (AR)

AND that

"that which exists" is "an 'existent' be it a thing, an attribute or an action;" (AR)

AND FURTHER

that"an existent" is "veridical perception and memory, or abstract and ideal e.g. in conception and valuation;" (Runes)

**Where

"veridical perception" is a direct relation of awareness between a conscious subject and an object of empirical or abstract content. (CEC) (Dict. of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism; unpublished)

i

Where cosmology is taken to mean that which treats of the origin and structure of the universe. Cosmology also refers to the structural view where it is the world view of physics. However, as to cosmological origin, let me be clear: There is no origin. If existence itself had an origin, then the pre-existing condition of existence would be non-existence, which by definition can have no existence and therefore cannot have been a state of being prior to existence.

ii

Where mechanical is taken to mean the explanation of the present and the future in terms of the past. The opposite of mechanical is teleology, i.e., the explanation of the past and the present in terms of the future. [see above for comparison]

iii

Where the moral argument is taken to mean an argument for God based on man's moral nature, an objective nature that gives him cause to make moral assertions about existence but has no basis for conclusions of the supernatural. The only moral argument acceptable is teleological, meaning it must be the answer to the question of whether, not why, Man needs ethics; and what those ethics must be in terms of the objective nature of Man himself as "all there is" in terms of deducing the natural, not the super-natural, existence of existence.

Note:

I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC


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