Defining “Natural”: A Philosophical Problem for Discussion

This is something on which I could use some help.

Preface:

“Entities” is to be understood in the broadest possible way. Entities may be existent or non-existent, simple or complex, irreducible or reducible, emergent or fundamental,[1] mental or non-mental, material or immaterial, etc. (Can you think of any significant bases I haven’t covered here?)

Let’s use “naturalism” to refer to the ontological claim that no entities exist that are non-natural.

Something is “non-natural” iff it is not identical to, reducible to, or wholly composed of natural entities.

Aim:

For present purposes, what we want is a definition of “natural” that allows naturalism to be an internally coherent thesis that someone can legitimately defend as a defeasible, a posteriori hypothesis. Naturalists claim that naturalism is a contingent truth.

Preferably, our definition of “natural” will leave room for the class of natural entities to contain more than the class of physical entities. Naturalism should not automatically entail physicalism.

Method:

I take it that in order for naturalism to be a posteriori and a contingent truth, it must be possible to present an argument for naturalism that is not circular or question-begging. (Perhaps the argument will finally be judged unsound; what matters right now is not the truth value of naturalism but its alleged contingency.)

I take it that the best argument available for naturalism is an argument from the empirical, meta-scientific observation of explanatory completeness[2] something like what follows (this a specifically physicalist version of the argument; I want to explore ways to modify the argument to make it apply to more inclusive forms of naturalism):

Scientific research of the last hundred years or so has had great success in finding physical (hence, natural) explanations for observed phenomena. There is no longer any reason (so the argument goes) to postulate the existence of any special, non-physical entities in order to account for observable, physical effects. Hence, the thesis of

“the ‘causal closure’ or the ‘causal completeness’ of the physical realm,
according to which all physical effects can be accounted for by basic physical
causes (where ‘physical’ can be understood as referring to some list of
fundamental forces)”[3]

has been well-confirmed. The methodological consideration of simplicity thus justifies the ontological hypothesis that the only fundamental entities that exist are those entities which make up the subject matter of physics.

First Try:

The history of science may be taken to confirm physicalism [see above] or else the thesis that there are no unexplainable phenomena. (Note: by definition, “phenomena” is restricted to the realm accessible to our observation). So naturalism could be the claim that we don’t need to posit any queer, non-scientific, supersensible entities in order to give (efficient) causal explanations of any observable phenomena. (We may consequently be justified to infer that there are no such entitites.) Everything we can observe can in principle be explained by other things that we observe, without recourse to the unobservable.

If we said that to be “natural” is to be observable (“non-natural” = “unobservable”), could we call the claim that nothing non-natural is a necessary component of an (efficient) causal explanation a scientific discovery, a posteriori, or a contingent truth?

No. Because something is observable by definition insofar as it causally generates observable effects; and if this is right, then it is an analytic truth, known a priori, “discovered” on reflection rather than observation, that all necessary posits of scientific explanations are observable, or “natural” on the above definition. (If I’m wrong and something can be non-observable but generate observable effects–subatomic particles, for example–then we have to reject our definition of “natural” because we want subatomic particles to count as “natural”, since the physical is supposed to be the paradigm case of the natural.)

Conclusion: This try hasn’t worked because the key claim turns out not to be a confirmable, defeasible, scientific hypothesis but rather a conceptual truth.

Help Desired!!

---

[1] By “fundamental” I intend “non-emergent”…can you please confirm or correct my terminology here?

[2] See David Papineau, “Naturalism”, §1.2-1.3, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/. I call this observation “meta-scientific” because it is a general observation about the fruits of recent scientific inquiry, rather than a particular observation that occurs within a particular scientific research program.

[3] Papineau, “Naturalism”, §1.2.
------

"Make me a channel of Your Peace."

-St. Francis

Read the full post.

A little moral epistemology

I cycled to campus for the second morning in a row (the third time ever). I estimate it takes about 30 minutes (give or take 5). I saves me a dollar on bus fare and whatever I'd pay to ride a stationary bike at a fitness center (although I'm sure it isn't constant activity the way aerobic exercise should be--it's actually an easy ride).

No rain today, so my tires are cleaner and my brakes are working better than yesterday. :)

I'm noticing that I'm out of practice with regular, spontaneous praise and thanksgiving. I don't spend enough time outside, being, wondering, enjoying--as Michael's been saying, properly playing. :) I think that means I need to spend serious time in the Psalter.

---

Note to self:

One of the more serious challenges for moral realism is moral epistemology. How can we know normative truths?

I suspect that moral knowing involves empirical investigation (a posteriori knowing) into what contributes to a certain notion of eudaimonia/well-being/happiness/a good life (or, on the flip side, what contributes to a certain notion harm). Thus far I think I'm in basic agreement with the Cornell realists--the reigning metaethical naturalists. But this empirical knowledge is not where our normative concepts of, e.g., well-being come from.

I suspect that our concepts of well-being properly originate partly in revelation (a posteriori, but not perhaps empirical knowing) and are partly innate (a priori knowing). I understand innate concepts as concepts that we form for the first time when we first use them to cognize something in our experience. So to say that we have innate concepts of well-being means that when we experience well-being (or a privation of well-being)--either for ourselves or in observation of others' lives--we recognize it as such. Such cognition is not necessarily infallible just because it involves native concepts.

I am open to both special revelation filling out and correcting our conceptions of well-being and privation of well-being, and to some form of internal spiritual regeneration (a la Plantinga's WCB model) doing the same.

(Comments welcome from all on the above!)

------

"Make me a channel of Your Peace."

-St. Francis

Read the full post.

Thought of the Day: On Nativism

Jerry Fodor has argued that we never really learn new class-concepts; we only learn new vocabulary for class-concepts we already have. For example, if you show me ten things and identify some as "flarn" and the others as "non-flarn", I might learn that the class-concept "flarn" applies to everything that is a flat, green, rectangular or triangular shape. I already had the concept of FLAT+GREEN+(RECTANGULAR OR TRIANGULAR) in my inventory of concepts; I just learned your word for this concept. Fodor argues that all lexical concepts--all concepts that are normally denoted by a single word in English--are innate. On this view, even the concept CARBURETOR is an innate concept. (He further supports this view with arguments designed to show that giving definitions of such concepts--in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions--is not possible using other, simpler concepts.) Let's call this view "extreme nativism".

OK - That was background. Here's my thought (had while walking back from teaching Logic this morning):

The essential claim of extreme nativism is that our class-concepts (at least, the lexical ones) are not learned in a classical empiricist sense--that is, we don't acquire these concepts via experience. They have always been a part of our mental inventory. (Note: Nativists don't deny that experience plays a role in our 'learning' concepts--we may have a concept innately, but we don't 'learn' it, in a sense, until we meet something in our expereince to which we apply it).

Perhaps this claim could be modified or restated to make it seem more plausible. The categories into which we sort the objects of our experience are a subjective contribution that our minds make to our experience, not a contribution that the objective, given reality makes to our experience. (William James says something like this--we classify and categorize things according to 'essences' depending on how it suits our practical purposes at the time). So, categorization is native to our minds, not a part of the world. Perhaps we don't create the class-concepts until we need them; it is not like there is a fixed set of concepts (including CARBURETOR) that is a part of our natural endowment that come out to play when we first meet something the concept applies to. Rather, we have an innate capacity to creatively make up class concepts in accordance with our practical purposes.

In some ways the great mystery (to scientists & philosophers of science) is, where do our concepts come from? And also, where do our hypotheses come from? The scientific method explains how we test our hypotheses, but it does not explain how we come up with them. My suggestion is that the creation of explanatory hypotheses and the conception of class-concepts are essentially and non-reductively products of our innate mental structures and capacities. No input from the external world determines our concepts and hypotheses for us; it is a part of our internal processing mechanism.

------

"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

Read the full post.