Naturalism: The Philosophical Position that Denies Santa Claus

Neil

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My title is intended to be provocative, but at the same time, I do wish it to express a genuine concern in which I cannot see what the real content of the Naturalistic position really is. If Naturalism is really just denying the supernatural, what use is it? This would make it a position that just denies Santa Claus.

In the Wikipedia article, it talks about some like Paul Kurtz saying that "nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles." But what does this mean and how can it be maintained in a contemporary physics that has now progressed to the point of non-material informational relations being more fundamental?

Another part says that "this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, deities, and ghosts are not real." But I am unclear on exactly what basis the concept of spirits and ghosts are logically excluded from naturalism, since I could see a way in which they would be included in a Naturalistic philosophy if consciousness is real and is based on experience of informational relations. Does Naturalism deny conscious experience?


Am I the only one that is confused about what Naturalism is supposed to be in the context of any scientifically motivated metaphysical dialog?
 
I think it's better to argue that science requires an epistemological foundation, namely scientific epistemology. It holds that things can be described according to a set of logical rules, presumably unvarying. That's naturalism from an epistemological view. Then we assume we can determine those logical rules by repeated observation that is consistent across observers.

Spirits aren't ruled out unless you require that they violate the current set of rules and then refuse to do the science to correct or enhance the rules. Or, more blatantly, if you say they are not bound by any rules and end up with something that is more or less unfalsifiable.

~~ Paul
 
I think it's better to argue that science requires an epistemological foundation, namely scientific epistemology. It holds that things can be described according to a set of logical rules, presumably unvarying. That's naturalism from an epistemological view. Then we assume we can determine those logical rules by repeated observation that is consistent across observers.

Spirits aren't ruled out unless you require that they violate the current set of rules and then refuse to do the science to correct or enhance the rules. Or, more blatantly, if you say they are not bound by any rules and end up with something that is more or less unfalsifiable.

~~ Paul

If naturalism requires an epistemology based on logic then it's foundation seems even more shaky!

If ghosts or spirits aren't ruled out, then naturalism seems to say even less, and even closer to being a stance that just rules out Santa Claus.
 
If naturalism requires an epistemology based on logic then it's foundation seems even more shaky!
I don't know what ontological naturalism requires. I'm only defining it as part of scientific epistemology. If we can't rely on logic, then I don't know what we can rely on.

If ghosts or spirits aren't ruled out, then naturalism seems to say even less, and even closer to being a stance that just rules out Santa Claus.
It doesn't even rule out Santa Claus, except by virtue of lack of evidence and also by calculation of the time required to deliver all the gifts. I think Santa Claus is ruled out the same way as ghosts are, except that many people believe in ghosts and laugh at the idea of Santa Claus. But that is just an appeal to popularity.

~~ Paul
 
I don't know what ontological naturalism requires. I'm only defining it as part of scientific epistemology. If we can't rely on logic, then I don't know what we can rely on.

Science mainly uses plausible reasoning, not logic.


It doesn't even rule out Santa Claus, except by virtue of lack of evidence and also by calculation of the time required to deliver all the gifts. I think Santa Claus is ruled out the same way as ghosts are, except that many people believe in ghosts and laugh at the idea of Santa Claus. But that is just an appeal to popularity.

~~ Paul

But Santa is a supernatural being...so it isn't a matter of evidence but rather an a priori exclusion because of his being a supernatural being.
 
Science mainly uses plausible reasoning, not logic.
The laws we discover/invent seem to be logical.

But Santa is a supernatural being...so it isn't a matter of evidence but rather an a priori exclusion because of his being a supernatural being.
If you insist on specifying that he is supernatural, then you have to define what supernatural means. If it means that he violates known laws of physics and such, then the a priori exclusion is warranted. That is, unless you can extend science with the laws of the supernatural. But then why would things be supernatural at all, and not just natural but new?

~~ Paul
 
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
http://www.newseum.org/exhibits/online/yes-virginia/
DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.


 
Evidence for the afterlife:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-...-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_afterlife

Nobel Prize winners Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Brian Josephson, Sir John Eccles, Eugene Wigner, George Wald and other great scientists and philosophers such as John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, Wernher von Braun, Karl Popper, and Carl Jung believed consciousness is non-physical because of the evidence:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers


Evidence for God
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-contents-evidence-for-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_god

Nobel Prize winners Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Guglielmo Marconi, Brian Josephson, William Phillips, Richard Smalley, Arno Penzias, Charles Townes, Arthur Compton, Antony Hewish, Christian Anfinsen, Walter Kohn, Arthur Schawlow and scientists, Charles Darwin, Sir Fred Hoyle, John von Neumann, Wernher von Braun, and Louis Pasteur, believed the scientific evidence demonstrates the existence of God or that the universe was designed:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers
 
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I like the sentiment on how certain human characteristics exceed the mechanistic account.

In a proper school system Virginia would at least see that Bruce Goldberg argues you cannot reduce these characteristics to a mechanistic model. As someone who rejects the mechanistic description of reality this makes sense to me, though I suspect the eliminativist will insist that a final account psychology should not even include those terms.

Of course, as Braude notes In Defense of Folk Psychology this is completely ridiculous as this would leave us with a "final account" that has less predictive power than the folk psychology we use everyday.

All that said I do think there's a distinction between human characteristics we can observe from inside & outside versus invisible entities?

Am I the only one that is confused about what Naturalism is supposed to be in the context of any scientifically motivated metaphysical dialog?

In A Place for Consciousness Gregg Rosenberg notes that he's not a physicalist but he maintains himself as a naturalist. (He calls this "Liberal Naturalism", Smolin calls it "Naturalism II" if memory serves.)

I'll try to find the exact quote but from memory Rosenberg's conception of naturalism is to avoid "discontinuities" in the sense of leaping from the evidence of what's known to extremes. He doesn't say what the extremes are though I suspect God, Psi, and such would fall in there somewhere...though at the same time I can see Rosenberg being amenable to the possibility of Psi given his position that consciousness is what carries causality.

(This is why I think Alex should interview people in the middle who aren't chasing UFOs or believing NDEs tell us about the afterlife, but also aren't die hard skeptics who think consciousness will have a materialist explanation. You don't advance discussion by swinging to extremes IMO.)

In principle I can see an ontology-neutral naturalism wherein one simply evaluates the evidence as it comes in. Of course this rules out materialism, which as Bitbol notes exceeds empiricism thanks to the advent of QM.

I would think MWI would also be rejected on similar grounds, for as Smolin notes that just seems like a way to hide ignorance under a rug.

My evaluation of Naturalism would be it seems centered around materialism at the current time but wipe the metaphysical assumptions away and you have a workable position for the sciences.
 
The laws we discover/invent seem to be logical.

That doesn't mean that there is a logical epistemological basis for science.


If you insist on specifying that he is supernatural, then you have to define what supernatural means. If it means that he violates known laws of physics and such, then the a priori exclusion is warranted. That is, unless you can extend science with the laws of the supernatural. But then why would things be supernatural at all, and not just natural but new?

~~ Paul

Exactly! That's why I am failing to see what content there really is in the term "naturalism."
 
Evidence for the afterlife:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-...-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_afterlife

Nobel Prize winners Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Brian Josephson, Sir John Eccles, Eugene Wigner, George Wald and other great scientists and philosophers such as John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, Wernher von Braun, Karl Popper, and Carl Jung believed consciousness is non-physical because of the evidence:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers


Evidence for God
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-contents-evidence-for-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_god

Nobel Prize winners Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Guglielmo Marconi, Brian Josephson, William Phillips, Richard Smalley, Arno Penzias, Charles Townes, Arthur Compton, Antony Hewish, Christian Anfinsen, Walter Kohn, Arthur Schawlow and scientists, Charles Darwin, Sir Fred Hoyle, John von Neumann, Wernher von Braun, and Louis Pasteur, believed the scientific evidence demonstrates the existence of God or that the universe was designed:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers

I'm not sure I really understand your point. What is the relation here with Naturalism?
 
I'm not sure I really understand your point. What is the relation here with Naturalism?

I think Jim's point is that if Naturalism followed its own tenets of fairly evaluating the evidence it would lead to the conclusions that consciousness is non-physical (under the current naturalist definition of matter) & that God is real.

I'd agree on the first part (at least as far as a new definition of matter being necessary), not as convinced about the second? Which isn't to say I've made up my mind or read all the evidence & arguments, but I think the question of "God" remains open especially since the word can refer to different things.

I do suspect that on consciousness the number of materialists in academia is going to significantly drop in the next decade, though this of course depends on where the science leads us. My general feeling is rather than parapsychology shattering materialism via Psi or NDE studies it's more that a paradigm shift will make parapsychology more acceptable as the "boggle threshold" lowers.
 
That doesn't mean that there is a logical epistemological basis for science.
True, but things seem to work pretty consistently.

Exactly! That's why I am failing to see what content there really is in the term "naturalism."
I don't see much content to the ontological definition. I think the epistemological definition is useful, since it emphasizes that we ought to be able to understand behavior by observation.

But I agree that it's not super exciting.

~~ Paul
 
True, but things seem to work pretty consistently.


I don't see much content to the ontological definition. I think the epistemological definition is useful, since it emphasizes that we ought to be able to understand behavior by observation.

But I agree that it's not super exciting.

~~ Paul

But I don't think other positions say that we can't. Unless it's just in contrast to supernaturalism?
 
What position says that?

It seems to me the only question is on what primitives one is willing to accept as foundational. Naturalism, at least as commonly accepted, seems to run into the problem that it has a variety of brute facts it is willing to accept but to me it seems this is nothing more than choosing convenient stopping points.

I do see some value in proceeding as conservatively as possible while acknowledging where the arbitrariness is. In this sense one might see methodological naturalism being salvaged?
 
It seems to me the only question is on what primitives one is willing to accept as foundational. Naturalism, at least as commonly accepted, seems to run into the problem that it has a variety of brute facts it is willing to accept but to me it seems this is nothing more than choosing convenient stopping points.

I do see some value in proceeding as conservatively as possible while acknowledging where the arbitrariness is. In this sense one might see methodological naturalism being salvaged?

Perhaps, but does Naturalism deny experience? This seems incoherent, but it seems to be the case. Is experience considered supernatural?
 
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