What is Metaphysical Naturalism? Part One

What is Metaphysical Naturalism?

Part One

I'm going to begin by using the opening paragraph from Wikipedia:

"Metaphysical or ontological naturalism is any worldview
in which the world is amenable to a unified study that includes the natural
sciences and in this sense the world is a unity. According to such a view, nature is all there is, and all things supernatural (which
stipulatively includes spirits and souls and non-natural values) do not exist,
or they are reducible to natural things. It is often simply referred to as naturalism, and occasionally as philosophical naturalism or ontological naturalism, though
all those terms have other meanings as well, with naturalism often referring to methodological naturalism." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_naturalism

That explains it!--if you know what all those terms mean and if you understand the subtle differences between many of them. From all that I've read and heard, not even the naturalists themselves all agree, using different terminology for exactly similar philosophical positions; or using precisely similar terminology for differences that may be subtle, or may be extremely and fundamentally different.

Reductive naturalism is one such "world-view" that denies the metaphysical importance given to the "soul" by religions. It "reduces" things like "soul" to what Wikipedia calls "natural things." I don't deny that in this sense, I too am a "reductivist." There is nothing in existence which can be of, or been created by, the supernatural. The first part of any definition of metaphysical naturalism is the denial that things can exist which are "super"natural.

However, as an atheist, I give the soul the same metaphsyical importance as theists insofar as admitting its existence, and its role, in the affairs of humans while they have empirical life (as opposed to "after-life," which would not be empirical but supernatural.)

Tom Clark, director of the Center for Naturalism http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/index.htm , claims that naturalism "affords superior prediction and control of our environment and ourselves, since in dropping the soul and free will we get rid of the fictional supernatural agency that blocks true explanations of phenomena." [italics added] [from the Academy Blogger post Determinism Vs. the Individualistic Naturalism of the Soul]

Clark, in neither of his websites (the other is http://www.naturalism.org/) defines his brand of naturalism as metaphysical, so far as I have discovered. He does declare that it is scientific naturalism. J.P. Moreland of "Boundless Webzine," describes scientific naturalism as having a "central creation myth — evolution." Obviously, Moreland is not a naturalist.

"Just what is scientific naturalism (hereafter, naturalism)?" Not even Moreland, a critic, makes a distinction between the forms of naturalism, ignorning that there are others. "Succinctly put," he writes, "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. [ ] Naturalism is a theory about reality in which physical entities are all there is." http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000872.html

Well, not exactly. Clark and his many famous associates, who take part in Clark's work, have various means of describing "mind," "soul," and "moral values," among other things that are "invisible." They are not "invisible" to MRIs, to mention one method of "seeing" them. MRIs record in real time the various parts of the brain that operating when stimulated by such things as scents, sights, sounds, memories, etc. While the MRIs are being recorded, so are other evidences of physiology, such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and skin conductivity. So in this sense the naturalism of scientists and philosophers such as Clark are able to discover the things that are "invisible" to reason alone. And in doing so, it takes such things as "soul" and "free" wil," and reduces them to their physiological descriptions, thereby taking the metaphysical content out of them.

What is Metaphysical Naturalism? Part One continued

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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The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
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The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

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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


mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

Testicular Stem Cells Thwart Religion to Determine Law

Stem Cells from Testicles Thwart Religious Intervention in Secular Lawmaking

The Christian right-wing-ness in President Bush caused him to put Judeo/Christian religion ahead of science and the cures for many diseases and biological defects, by banning the use of the reproduction of stem cells.

There may be no science that proves the human soul begins when life begins at conception, and there are epistemic arguments for saying the soul begins at birth. But the religious limitations placed on stem cell reproduction is being thwarted by men's testicles. That is something Mr. Bush can do nothing about, unless Christians wish to being arguing that the soul exists in each half of the human connection, i.e., in the sperm and in the egg.

Studies showed scientific potential using "spermatogonial cells" from the testicles of mice. "The new study used cells taken from biopsied tissue from 22 different men undergoing various medical treatments. The men ranged in age from 17 to 81. Researchers found that after a few weeks of growth, the cells could differentiate into various types of cells just like those taken from embryos," said the Associated Press.

However, some scientists, saying the idea is promising, also said testicle cells are not a reason to give up on research on embryonic stem cells.

"It's exciting. We could do it for males; that leaves women without as easy a method," said stem cell scientist George Daley of Children's Hospital in Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He was not part of the new research, said the AP.

This is great news for disease and genetic researchers all over the globe. But I have a problem when religion outweighs the secularity of our laws. Our Founders may have been superb theologians and great believers in the Deist God; but they knew the danger of allowing religion to dictate the terms of our laws.

The Deists were Naturalists, which is why Thomas Jefferson got away with writing that "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" were the basis for human equality; they allow us to assume among the powers of the earth our separateness from each other and our equal stations in life. He did not write "God" alone, and indeed there is anecdotal evidence that Benjamin Franklin might have had a hand in encouraging that turn of words.

The use of the words "Nature's God" allows each man and woman his/her own understanding of the nature of existence, including the total non-belief in the supernatural, if that is the decision one comes to; but invoking the "Laws of Nature" gets right to the heart of the naturalism of the Deists, indeed, right to the heart of any naturalist.

Christians and all religions of supernaturalism deny that only the the laws of nature exist devoid of a supreme being. Deists as supernaturalists believe, in the same moment as they believe there is a God, that that same God endowed Man with Reason and endowed the world with immutable laws, and that together those laws and Man's reason are all that can be counted on. God may have created the world, but after that he was strictly a hands-off kind of Creator. All the answers to the questions of the world are to be found in Reason, including the questions and answers on the meditations of faith. Faith itself, however, is a matter for the soul.

It is not of that reason, in other word it is not reasonable, to assume that a soul can exist before the tabula rasa has any empirically-generated material of mind by which such a thing as the soul can exist. The soul is not supernatural; it is part of the nature of Man's being, as much as his toenails or his liver--or his mind.

But mind is the product of sensory impressions retained by the brain; and soul is the emotional content, the structure of the metaphysical meaning of those retained impressions. "Nature's God" is to the description of the contents of each human's individualistic beliefs regarding the questions and the rational answers of existence, what "soul" is to the emotional content regarding the nature of existence.

"Every time we walk along a beach," wrote the naturalist Loren Eiseley, "some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.”

"Ancient urge" is not what I would call the emotional content of man's soul, but the soul is as old as man himself, so it is indeed ancient. But this emotional content is ostensive in its nature; in other words, it is the description in emotional terms that only that which we call a soul can point at using our volition of the faculty of consciousness.

How many times have you heard it said, "What I felt can't be described in words?" What was felt and indescribably in words was ostensive. My Webster's defines "ostensive" as "directly pointing out," as one can only point to the sky or the ocean to "point out" what is the color blue. Without pointing, the color comes down to the scientific description of the wavelength of the color. Without feeling the soul, its nature comes down, like the description of a wavelength, to the reductive, deterministic science that declares all things in consciousness to be merely the firing of neurons, and chemical and electrical operations of the physiology of the body.

The soul is much more than reductive descriptions of the scientific evidence of how the body works. In order for the "ancient urge" to awaken, it must be struck by empirical impressions. A human born without sensory awareness can never gain consciousness, because without things about which to be conscious, it cannot exist. To exist without things to be conscious of is contradictory of the definition of the word. That much does not not contradict reductionism.

The soul is the emotional content of consciousness, and as such it cannot exist until the mind has gained enough sensory impressions to create one. This can only begin at birth, and it may be almost immediate. It would not contain much at that point, but the volition of the soul cannot begin begin before birth, before the trauma of birth awakens the brain to the content of sensory knowledge. It is the volition of the soul that upsets the apple cart of reductionism.

Right-wing fundamental Judeo/Christians are fighting
the wrong enemy when they fight science as a whole. It is only this idea of
reductionism, of the idea that man is nothing but the contents of his physiology
producing a "belief" in the existence of the soul, that the fundamentalists must
fight. Many scientists who believe the soul begins at birth, not at conception,
believe in God and the soul, not in reductionism. These scientists are not the
enemy of Christians; many of them are Christians.

To believe that such an object as the soul, created by sensory impressions and emotionally judged by the nature of each man's metaphysics, is immutable while believing the physical body that created it is not, (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,) to believe that the soul is transcendental and that it is placed or created or somehow infused into the fertilized egg at the very moment the sperm enters it, is the stuff of religion. And that stuff of religion contradicts the non-deterministic, non-reductionistic laws of nature that define the means of the creation of the soul.

If there be a God, He caused its creation in birth, not in conception.

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

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of the
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM, The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®