The ‘traditional’ objections to a wholly naturalistic metaphysics, within the modern Western philosophical tradition, involve the vexed notions of freedom and consciousness. But there is, I think, a much deeper and more interesting line of criticism to naturalism, and that involves the notion of intentionality and its closely correlated notion of normativity.
What is involved in my belief that I’m drinking a beer as I type this? Well, my belief is about something — namely, the beer that I’m drinking. But what does this “aboutness” consist of? It requires, among other things, a commitment that I have undertaken — that I am prepared to respond to the appropriate sorts of challenges and criticisms of my belief. I’m willing to play the game of giving and asking for reasons, and my willingness to be so treated is central to how others regard me as their epistemic peer. But there doesn’t seem to be any way that the reason-giving game can be explained entirely in terms of the neurophysiological story of what’s going on inside my cranium. That neurophysiological story is a story of is the case, and the reason-giving story is essentially a normative story — of what ought to be the case.
And if Hume is right — as he certainly seems to be! — in saying that one cannot derive an ought-statement from an is-statement,and if naturalism is an entirely descriptive/explanatory story that has no room for norms, then in light of the central role that norms play in human life (including their role in belief, desire, perception, and action), it is reasonable to conclude that naturalism cannot be right.
(Of course, it does not follow from this that any version of theism or ‘supernaturalism’ must be right, either.)
Oops double comment
I think the issue KN originally raised is not just reference to the external world.
Rather, he was concerned with references that use only the language of science. (ETA:) And he claimed that norms were needed but could not be described in scientific language.
Consider the beauty of a painting. That beauty is a fact because of the judgement of a consensus of knowledgeable experts.
But that fact still supervenes on the physical world; that is, if you want to change the judgement about beauty, you have to change something physical about the painting.
Now you might argue that the fact of beauty is relative to aesthetics standards and so it not really a fact.
But if you take that approach, a challenge is that people like William are free to raise the same relativity to standards for science — when is a violation truly a violation? What constitutes good evidence? Why ought I to accept your definitions? Why ought I care about what works for you or a group of scientists?
What is what I read him to be doing in some of your exchanges.
Lucky you! I struggle these days to remember what I had for breakfast.
Nope. Won’t have that. It’s all about emotions – and emotions are mostly about sex.
ETA
That was a bit flippant but seriously scientific questions can be asked and experiments done (they may have been) on how people react to visual images, such as famous paintings. I see there is something called Stendhal syndrome.
You should only care if and because it works. My science is very inclusive. Lots of experiments are fun, easy and cheap to do. The most important attribute for a scientist should be insatiable curiosity.
I would say that emotions are indicators that something important to survival is in the works, and that depending on the outcome, learning will take place.
Or sex! 🙂
If you ever remember what you had for breakfast, I’ll have some.
Keith:
But wouldn’t “insufficient” require some norm to define it?
I suspect that any instrumental statement you can come up with can be subject to a similar challenge — why ought I accept your standards for evidence or reliability or truth or whatever you use in the antecedent to the if of your instrumental statement.
In the end, I think you have to fall back on a pragmatic approach, eg what works to accomplish human cognitive goals. And KN claims that pragmatic approaches cannot be phrased in scientific language due to is/ought gap.
Regardless of that, a pragmatic approach is also subject so someone like William saying “why should I care what works for you?”
I agree but using “what works” as a norm is the sort of pragmatic norm that KN claimed cannot be phrased in scientific language. His posts near the beginning of the replies to OP detail that point of view.
And “not being describable by science” is what I took him to mean by “not being naturalistic”.
And William’s whole point, as I read it, is that he has different standards for what works. I think the best you can reply is something like: where would you rather live, North Korea or South Korea? That is why standards about what works matter.
Irrelevant to the questions asked. I’ll try again: did your wife have cancer in this physical world? In other words, did she have a physical ailment known as cancer? Did that physical cancer cease to exist in any physical form in her physical body?
I mean, clearly if she had an inoperable immaterial cancer in her soul, I could understand your answer above. But if she had real cancer of the body, well…the answer should be pretty straight forward.
Well, to me, a cancer diagnosis is a category A ailment. Do let me know whether you are being serious about your wife’s illnesses or simply offering anecdotes on metaphysical rumbly tummies…
“Imagination is 100% effective for treating imaginary ailments”
– Robin
BruceS,
That’s odd. I would say that “go with what works” is the epitome of good science. But then I am an inveterate pragmatist. I’d probably do better at this if I knew what a “norm” was. SEP doesn’t seem much help.
Robin said:
Yes, it is irrelevant to all category A questions and lines of examination/description/explanation. I’ve already said so.
That’s not obvious. Admittedly, I do not subscribe to naturalism, so perhaps I don’t really know how the naturalist is supposed to conceptualize the physical world.
Personally, I doubt that we can ever have a 100% complete scientific account that covers everything. I would be surprised if naturalists all believe that such a 100% account is possible.
Actually, it is. We study some pretty wild topological spaces that have no relation to anything in physical reality.
I agreed with KN about that.
I’m inclined to say that all reference in science depends on norms, and that those norms themselves are not explained by science.
Glen Davidson said:
This is a continuation of the catch-22 already described. You want category B phenomena to be explicable/provable via category A methodology. If it could be, it’d be category A. You’re asking for an impossibility – to show you how not-A is A.
Glen Davidson said:
That would help if “bias” was the issue between A and B. “Bias” is a category A justification/dismissal for results that seem to contradict category A.
Not that bias doesn’t exist and isn’t an issue, it’s just not the issue separataing A from B.
You are framing your questions as if everything asserted to be category B is either category A or hoaxes, hallucinations, fraud, flukes of chance and quantum anomalies, mistakes, misconceptions, delusion, variances of bias, etc. What you – and everyone else here – fails to address is if category B really is category B – unavailable to naturalistic (repeatable & universal) investigation. What you and everyone else here demands is that category B be examined in the same way, with the same assumptions and mental framework as that which works for category A.
IOW, if I can’t prove it via category A techniques, then you think you’ve made some great point in saying “See! It’s not category A!!!”
Right. It’s not category A. It’s category B. From the category A point of view, that means it’s all hoaxes, hallucinations, fraud, flukes of chance and quantum anomalies, mistakes, misconceptions, delusion, variances of bias, etc.
As I already said.
I’d distinguish between “being aware of” or “observing” from “explaining”. Even the most optimistic realist is not expecting to have a complete explanation of observed reality any time soon, I am sure. But we can bite off small bits and process them. We can’t do the same for the paranormal yet – we don’t have the material to work with. (pun intended)
Glen Davidson said:
We? Who’s we? The people that haven’t experienced magic working?
We who use reliable standards, as opposed to those who tell us that reliable standards should be junked where they do not like them.
Glen Davidson
Defining (ETA: what in general it takes to be) “good” science is a function of philosophy, not science! I am pretty sure KN would say it that way and that makes sense to me.
Norms like peer review, principled discussion of pros and cons of theoretical claims, using “correct” statistical analysis, Occam’s razor, and so on — they all require human judgement. Is that human judgement describable by scientific means such as mathematical equations or mechanistic models and without reference to any norm, including pragmatism?
That’s the question as I see as the heart KN’s concerns of brain states versus thoughts (= justified beliefs).
GlenDavidson said:
“Reliable”, in the sense that anyone can do it any time given the proper experimental materials, is category A. “Reliable” in the sense that you can prove to yourself that something works well enough to be useful = category B. Is that what you mean by “reliable”?
I prefer to keep my beliefs in line with my actual experiences, appalling or not. That you, I and others cannot “category A” study them isn’t a concern of mine because I know it’s not a category A commodity in the first place. It can only be personally investigated to see how/if it works for you.
Looks like guano to me. Alan?
How they react and how they ought to react are two different things.
I made a point of specifying the consensus of informed experts, not just anyone, to remove emotional considerations.
Who gets to define an expert? Precisely. Same question applies to both scientific and art experts.
Abstract algebra like group theory.. Turing machines and results like the halting problem proof. Lots more I am sure if you really know mathematics.
Oh right, you get to the nub of the issue, heavy bias, and it “belongs” in Guano.
That’s the really dumb part of this forum, that people aren’t to be called out on their obvious biases, and lack of any evident good faith discussion.
Well, I suppose this will be on Guano soon enough as well, which means that it becomes pointless to discuss anything further, since the issue really is bias, and nothing else, when it comes to William. Not that I said anything that many others have that hasn’t landed on Guano, but the moderation is as inconsistent as it is based on assumptions that have no basis in fact.
Glen Davidson
After all, in a very real sense, William admits his bias, even though he tries to evade it by inventing “categories” that can’t be shown to exist.
So how, when he bases his claims on his biases, does it become against the rules to note those biases?
Well anyway, like I said, if what really causes William to write what he does is off limits, then the discussion can’t deal with the real matters involved, so off to Guano, etc.
Truth is Guano, Guano is truth. Seems to be the TSZ rule.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson:
Junk them? I don’t see how you’re getting that. You’re free to live by whatever standards you wish.
I’m just facilitating the now-obvious point that many if not most “naturalists” (materialists/physicalists) operate in a catch-22 mentality when it comes to the supernatural. Essentially, they won’t believe anything supernatural exists unless it can be shown to be not supernatural.
Heh. Sounds like a metaphor for social life as a who!e. Not (just) TSZ. Except I would use a ruder word than “guano”.
Funny, I have an teenage son who detests my frequent cursing. I’m inhibited here (don’t get me started!) But sometimes I find it more frustrating than I can bear to suppress my desires to curse the !iars, the re!igious, the woo-meisters, the happy-c!appers, the theocrats … a pox on a!! their houses.
Yeah, I suppose it’s a good thing Lizzie has house rules and calls the rule-breaking stuff “guano”. So much nicer.
keiths:
walto:
It certainly is for a moral subjectivist, who explicitly identifies the conscience as the ultimate source of his or her moral judgments, but I would argue that it also applies to moral objectivists, like William. He, too, bases his moral judgments on what his conscience tells him — it’s just that he pretends that what his conscience tells him (at least in certain “self-evident” cases) is objectively true, when he has no basis for that claim.
Even folks who ostensibly get their morality from an external source, like the Bible, are employing their consciences. The final step in any moral regress involves the conscience, unless you invoke an unjustified free-floating ought.
For example:
1. I should not commit adultery, because the Bible prohibits it.
2. I should obey this prohibition, because the Bible is the word of God.
3. I should obey the word of God, because he is my creator.
4a. I should obey my creator, because I feel that it’s right to do so.
– or –
4b. I should obey my creator, because it is objectively true that we should obey our creator.
Problem is, no one ever justifies statements like 4b, which is why I conclude that the conscience is the ultimate source of morality, even for those who think it isn’t.
That sounds contradictory to me, unless the person means “I understand that this is wrong by some other standard, but my conscience is indifferent to the matter.” In that case there is no contradiction because what is wrong by one standard may be perfectly fine by another.
What’s problematic about that? You can disapprove of something without regarding it as immoral.
You don’t need a free-floating ought if the moral regress ends with your conscience, as I claim it must. The conscience is ultimately a physical phenomenon, instantiated in our brains.
Not me, because I acknowledge the existence of values. It’s just that I think they are instantiated in our brains. You can’t have a value without a valuer, and all of the valuers we know of possess brains.
Alan,
That’s growth, not regrowth.
Sure, but we’re talking about now, when such technology is unavailable.
First, steady human libmb regrowth is not consistent with the laws of physics. If you modified humans, perhaps by genetic engineering, then their limbs might regrow naturally, but right now, it is impossible — which is why we never see it happening.
That’s all we ever have. For example, we don’t actually know that there’s a causal link between the Higgs boson and the results of the experiments at the LHC. We infer a causal link because that hypothesis fits the data much better than competing hypotheses.
It’s always about (provisionally) selecting the best available hypothesis. I argue that there are potential cases where the best available hypothesis would be a supernatural one.
Alan,
1) Euler’s Identity
2) The fact that I’m feeling chipper tonight
3) The solutions to 3x^2 + 2x – 16 = 0
4) The fact that if a freen is completely bargaceous, it is not partially bargaceous
keiths:
Alan:
You’re missing the point, which is that many methodological naturalists haven’t thought things through because they haven’t needed to. Confront them with the right kind of evidence, like my limb regrowth example, and most of them would see the need, I predict.
keiths:
Bruce:
Sure, but
a) I’m repudiating Clifford’s Principle, not affirming it; and anyway
b) “insufficient” is not a free-floating norm, so it poses no difficulties for naturalism.
If I say “you ought to employ my evidential standards if you care about the truth”, you can respond by saying, as William does, “I don’t care about the truth.” That ends the regress, because the “ought” only applies when the “if” is satisfied.
I disagree, because ought-ifs can be expressed in declarative language. As I said to KN earlier in the thread:
William,
I think you’re substantially overestimating the proportion of naturalists whose minds are closed to evidence for the supernatural.
What do you say to naturalists like me who
a) aren’t methodological naturalists,
b) are open to evidence for the supernatural,
c) care about the truth, unlike you, and
d) want to maximize true beliefs while minimizing false ones?
I think such a person would be extremely ill-advised to adopt your lax scientific standards. Do you disagree?
keiths,
keith, you write of William, “He, too, bases his moral judgments on what his conscience tells him.” Well, he may base them on some scripture, but I do, anyhow. The thing you’re missing is that such “basing” does not produce identities, except for the logical positivist. I base my views about the world on my senses, but the world is not my senses or any product of them, except to the phenomenalist. Many (non-God-fearing) objectivists will agree that we must base our values on our feelings, without making that last (I’d say with Moore and many others fallacious) step to identifying values with those feelings.
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, pp. 159–160:
French skeptic Anatole France, quoted from The Garden of Epicurus:
I find it odd that a person would think it more of a supernatural miracle to re-grow an arm than it is a miracle for the arm to be produced by non-supernatural forces over time in the first place. After all, the truly hard part – assembling the functional biological information/blueprint, the materials and means to produce the materials, and the means to construct the arm with all of the coordinated and necessary infrastructure in the first place is the truly difficult and hard-to-imagine part.
All it takes to re-grow that limb is to just find a way to access and employ the information already present, use the materials and construction mechanisms already available and on site. Other creatures we know of are capable of this. To claim it to be “impossible” to the point of calling it evidence of the supernatural is, to me, baffling. If re-growing an arm is enough to convince a person of the existence of the supernatural, making the arm in the first place should be considered even more of a supernatural event.
The difference? A person sees arms all the time. They are ubiquitous, so it doesn’t seem to be a miracle. A person never sees an arm re-growing, so it seems to them it would be a miracle for them to see something they’ve never seen happen before, and never heard of happening. Which takes me back to a point I already made: it seems to me that the challenge to the supernatural is always “make something happen that I’ve never seen happen and has never been reported to happen” and “prove it occurred in the same way you prove the natural”.
It’s a challenge based upon the comfort of the challenger that the challenge cannot be met (much like Randi’s challenge), nothing more. It has nothing whatsoever to do with really thinking about what the term “supernatural” must mean, how (if it exists) must be something completely unlike what we call “natural”, and how investigating it, validating it and using it cannot be the same as investigating validating and using the natural.
Essentially, the “show me something never known to have happened and which I am virtually certain is impossible” and “demonstrate it via naturalistic investigatory/evidence methodology” mindset is a poorly thought-out, catch-22 method of simply denying the supernatural altogether. It’s like naturalists have put no thought whatsoever into what “the supernatural” would mean, and have put all their efforts into gathering memes and developing naturalist apologetics to convince themselves it doesn’t exist.
“I find nothing remotely supernatural about nature building a fully functioning arm over time from scratch (inorganic molecules) in the first place, but if that arm was severed and regrew in the same place it was before, on the same organism that had all the basic information and materials necessary to rebuild it, now that – THAT – I would find to be evidence of the supernatural!”
Yeah. That’s a keeper.
Well, since you’ve not provided any category B phenomenon (ye olde immaterial cancer of the soul) or phenomenon B evidence, must be that you are unwilling to answer the question. No matter as it’s good evidence that you don’t actually operate on a category B perspective. Good enough for me.
Sure, but the context here was cancer, so William’s response is just a dodge to avoid the difficult issue of his assertions. Unless his wife was just suffering from a case of the giggles or perhaps is a hypochondriac, such a post is tantamount to, “I got nothing.”
Actually, you’ve facilitated no such thing. You’ve merely demonstrated that your category B phenomenon cannot possibly interact with a category A reality. Which is the problem many folks, including Mike Elizinga, have harped on for years: how does this mysterious “supernatural” push atoms around? Basically, you’re insisting it doesn’t, or at least it doesn’t in any detectable manner, so it can’t be studied using category A methods. Fair enough, but then you fall into your own catch-22: if it isn’t pushing any atoms around, it isn’t having any impact on the material world at all. So who cares? Clearly it can’t effect a cancer (a category A phenomenon made up of atoms); all it can do is deal with the metaphysical sniffles. Big whoop!
Keith:
I still think the free-standing ought you are trying to avoid is hidden in the antecedent of any if that you propose.
I also tend to agree with Walt on the difference between feelings and values.
Have you had a chance to take a look at SEP stuff on metaethics? It’s a good summary of the issues.
As detailed in the SEP, it is possible to argue that moral norms are facts about the world in some sense. Or maybe statements about norms are not propositions at all — just commands, for example. If either of these approaches can be fully worked out, then moral norms can be said to be naturalistic.
My worldview would bias me to a naturalistic approach, and I am trying to understand these better. So I would like to agree with you, but I am not convinced by the reasons you give for your naturalism (again, meaning fully explainable by science).
I understand that there is an analogous argument about language norms that, eg, Millikan (and Dennett, who tends to agree with her generally in this area) makes. I’d like to understand that better. It is an approach to argue against KN’s OP.
This may well be true for people who do not know the biology behind limb (or body) growth during development, but for those of use who do understand how and why limbs grow the way they do (and more importantly, why they stop growing over time), the issue of cell division and organization during development is no miracle at all. However, given human cells – and that’s the kicker – it is impossible for all, but the most infantile structures to ever reform after being severed (I’ll add, for Alan’s benefit, “on its own”). We know how and why that is the case too. So, if someone’s arm or hand could be shown to regrow “on its own”, that would fit the definition of a miracle.
There are two good reasons for saying human limb regrowth is impossible short of a miracle.
One reason is based in physiology and is well understood.
The second is that it’s never been observed.
I think William may have presented a centuries old claim, but even that claim does not include the observation of regrowth.
So an actual instance of regrowth would be a Cambrian rabbit.
walto,
The sentence I bolded doesn’t make sense to me. Could you rephrase it? William doesn’t base his moral judgments on scripture. Do you?
Values require valuers. No valuers, no values. Valuers value via their brains. Vary the brain in the right ways, and you vary the values.
How does any of that imperil naturalism? What, specifically, is the part that can’t be described in naturalistic terms?
keiths,
No, I don’t value based on “scriptures” I get my evidence via my feelings of approval/disapproval. I just don’t know how William rolls.
“Values require valuers. No valuers, no values.”
That is question begging. I deny it.
“Valuers value via their brains.”
That is an example of the genetic fallacy. I’m not denying that people value via their brains. It’s irrelevant.
“Vary the brain in the right ways, and you vary the values”
Again, question-begging. You certainly vary the IMPRESSION of the values, but objectivists will deny you’re varying the value.
Bruce,
Could you give an example?
Robin said:
Sure I have. You’ve just attempted to re-characterize it as category A phenomena that can be appropriately addressed via category A methodology.
As I predicted.
Scientists who either are or aren’t very good at their jobs get noticed. Experiments and data get checked. Cold fusion?
Robin asks:
I believe he’s referring to what any if/ought statement regresses to; if you don’t want to go to jail, you ought pay your taxes. Why ought you avoid jail in the first place? Because the goal serves my own particular interests/feelings/predisposition
IOW, for the materialist, “because I feel like it” is the only “is” that ultimately defines moral behavior. Which makes it moral to torture children for personal pleasure, if that what one feels like doing.
Without “free-floating” oughts – oughts that exist and are true no matter what your feelings are, then any behavior based on feeling is justifiable as moral.
Except that it must occur in a human, since it already occurs in other creatures. Which is another reason it’s a rather absurd place to draw the supernatural line.