I’ve always understood Methodological Naturalism to mean the assumption we make in science that things are predictable, probabilistically at any rate.
It needn’t be true, and nor do we make any conclusion as to whether it is true or not, we merely proceed under that assumption, because it underlies the methodology that we call science.
But clearly some people, often citing Plantinga (here and here) regard it as some kind of error made by scientists that enables them to fallaciously reject religion, or at least compromise “religious neutrality”.
But oddly, it seems to me, Plantinga himself solves the problem he thinks “methodological naturalism” creates, but doesn’t appear to notice the solution. He writes :
So there is little to be said for methodological naturalism. Taken at its best, it tells us only that Duhemian science must be metaphysically neutral and that claims of direct divine action will not ordinarily make for good science. And even in these two cases, what we have reason for is not a principled proscription but a general counsel that in some circumstances is quite clearly inapplicable. There is no reason to proscribe questions like: did God create life specially? There is no reason why such a question can’t be investigated empirically63; and there is no reason to proscribe in advance an affirmative answer.
in which he seems to have got himself into a muddle. He seems to accept that “ordinarily” the assumption of methodological naturalism is what makes for good science, but complains that it is “clearly inapplicable” to some questions. Well, sure. And those questions include “did God create life specially?”
We can’t answer that using scientific methodology (i.e. methodological naturalism), but it doesn’t stop us asking the question, nor from believing that the answer is yes, even if we find evidence that it could also have occurred “naturally”. So far so good.
But then writes: “There is no reason why such a question can’t be investigated empirically63“. It can? How? So we check footnote 63, where he writes:
Why couldn’t a scientist think as follows? God has created the world, and of course has created everything in it directly or indirectly. After a great deal of study, we can’t see how he created some phenomenon P (life, for example) indirectly; thus probably he has created it directly.
So we can infer, I think, that Plantinga regards such an empirical method as a violation of “methological naturalism”.
And indeed it is. Moreover, it is exactly the “empirical” method espoused by ID.
So does that mean that ID is not science? Or that ID is science, but scientists are deliberately eschewing a methodology that would allow an ID to be inferred?
It seems to me that this lies at the heart of the non-connection between IDists and ID critics. It’s not that science can’t investigate intelligent causes (it can) or infer intelligent causation (it can), or that ID doesn’t posit a supernatural designer necessarily, it’s just method for detecting design. It’s that ID proceeds by drawing a conclusion from lack of an alternative explanation. In other words, it is based on rejecting a null hypothesis that it does not model.
So is all that’s wrong with “methodological naturalism”, in the eyes of IDists, the fact that we insist that the null is modeled? Is that it?
I think that’s what it boils down to, hence all those probability arguments, and challenges to ID critics to provide a probability estimate for Darwinian evolution.
But, if so, what an odd disagreement to have spawned so vast an argument!
(Hoping an IDist or two may weigh in here….)
In case this was not clear in #3473, ‘Culture’ is an example of something ‘real’ that is not ‘Natural.’ For discussion purposes here, not ‘Natural’ and ‘non-natural’ can be read synonymously. ‘Extra-natural’ means ‘beyond which’ or ‘more than just’ in regard to ‘natural.’ In other words, some things exist (i.e. are ‘real’) that are best referred to with another concept/signifier than ‘natural.’
If this is what you mean by scientific realism, then sure. However, I would suggest “Culture” would be difficult to define scientifically though it is a handy category for covering the study of human nature and behaviour (like life!).
One might ask whether “natural” and its antonyms are at all useful in conveying meaning. They often appear to result in misunderstanding, whether intentional or not.
It’s a while since I studied German. However, I’m pretty sure that “Wissenschaften” is better understood as meaning “knowledge” than as science. The meaning of “science” has become more specialized in English usage.
Wissenschaft ist die Erweiterung des Wissens durch Forschung.
Also sprach the German Wiki. Meaning, quit literally, “Wissenschaft” is the expansion of knowledge through research.
Please explain in what sense ‘culture’ is not ‘natural’. And, in doing so, I should think it might be important to define what you mean by ‘natural’.
To Ido and Neil,
Though surely a dictionary and a few years in a foreign language serve their level of purpose, perhaps these sites might convince some of you that ‘wissenschaften’ is meant by Germans as ‘science’:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Academy_of_Sciences_at_Berlin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz_Scientific_Community
gemeinschaft = community
The latter’s 5 sections, its own variant of how to organise knowledge, may lead some to question if the idea that *’science’ studies nature-only* is a rather difficult position to hold. It was this contention that made me criticise Elizabeth’s use of MN as ‘scientific methodology.’ (Now there are other issues to address, re: prediction and the ideology of empiricism…in her definition of ‘science.’)
Leviathan is recommended reading W. Dilthey, H. Rickert, W. Windelband and of course Max Weber. In their great company, by ‘cultural’ I mean ‘non-natural’ and/or ‘extra-natural.’ And I am speaking of wissenschaften/science when I refer to studying it.
“The meaning of “science” has become more specialized in English usage.” – Neil
Is it then your contention, Neil, that the ‘more specialized’ meaning of ‘science’ in English usage refers to *nature-only*? In other words, can ‘science’ only study ‘natural’ things or are there multiple ‘sciences,’ some of which study *other* realms? Does ‘specialized’ the way you write it really just mean ‘naturalistic’?
This is semantic quicksand already. Of course culture is natural. What is meant by “natural” here is, any phenomenon which can be examined and tested in the real world. My understanding is that in the world of science, there is no distinction between “natural” and “artificial”, because everything can be considered as a process where environmental constraints shape outcomes. And in this sense, science can only study natural things, because natural things includes everything that can be demonstrated to exist, or gives any testable evidence of existing.
If I’m reading you correctly, you are associating “unnatural” with some sort of motivation or intent, probably a human intent. Is a bird’s nest “natural” considering a bird intended to build it? Or is it “artificial”? And here again, my understanding is that if it can be studied and understood, it’s natural.
We are in agreement. In German the term Wissenschaft has a broader meaning than the English term science, in that Wissenschaft also includes the social sciences, linguistics etc. Science is Naturwissenschaft.
Didn’t Einstein publish some of his work in the journal Naturwissenschaften? In a sense it’s the German version of the US journal Science, albeit that the former is a bit less prestigious these days.
Gregory,
I’ve had the advantage of not only doing history and philosophy of science in addition to my doctorate in biology, but spending four years in Germany at the Free University of Berlin doing my postdoc. Naturwissenschaften and Kulturwissenschaften pretty much correspond to our division between the so called “hard sciences” and the social sciences.
http://www.xkcd.com/435/
But social science studies entirely natural things. I don’t know where you get the idea that culture is “non-natural”, it is 100% natural. After all, chimpanzees and dolphins have culture and the transmission of cultural knowledge.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/2011/10/21/cultural-transmission-in-chimpanzees/
Sure, social sciences tend to be more qualitative than most of the other sciences, and questionnaires feature a lot more, but you still do exactly the same things all other sciences do. Observe, hypothesise, test your hypothesis, reject or refine that hypothesis on the basis of data. During my PhD I shared a house with a bunch of social scientists and learned more about multivariate regression than I ever wished to know (and hermeneutics [shudder]).
Humans culture and artefacts are 100% natural in the sense of the word “natural” used in “methodological naturalism”.
Ian Musgrave,
Yes, it’s interesting that the fanciest multivariate methods tend to originate in the social sciences.
No.
It is my contention that science studies whatever it usefully can study using its methods. It tends to then apply the term “nature” to what it studies.
Science has no a priori commitment to only study nature, nor does it have any a priori definition of “nature.” I have no idea what you mean by “other realms”, though your use of that term suggests some confusion.
I think the reason is simply that the signal to noise ratio is typically much smaller in the kind of data that social scientists work with, compared to the kind of data that “hard” scientists work with. It requires fancy statistics to discover significant patterns in noisy data. I say “typically” because there are of course exceptions, such as particle physicists trying to discover the signature of the Higgs boson in gigabytes of data.
I once taught a friend, who is a molecular biologist, how to compute and plot error bars (standard error of the mean) for a graph that she was going to present at a meeting of her lab. After her talk, she was considered a statistical genius by her colleagues.
Amazing things said in this thread!
“our division between the so called “hard sciences” and the social sciences”
Who does ‘our’ refer to?
Good to know who one is speaking with/for…
Gregory,
Scientists in general. See http://www.xkcd.com/435/
(Physical Scientists can be snarky and call social science “soft” science, but the physicists tend to think all other science is stamp collecting 🙂
Ido,
No, it’s more that they can control fewer variables than most physical sciences (anyone who has worked in ecology or epidemiology knows the feeling), hence the need for *multi*variate analysis.
You are right. That is a better explanation than I gave.
Okay… so “non-natural”, to you, means something in the vicinity of “produced by humans”? Okay, fine. No problem. The boring old science that you have problems with, well, that science studies things that are gregory-style-“non-natural” all the time—linguistics studies human languages, archaeology studies human artifacts, yada yada yada.
It’s true that many (perhaps ‘most’?) scientists do not agree with or acknowledge the human-vs-nature dichotomy you’re pushing here. But that doesn’t mean they refuse to acknowledge that somethings are produced by humans; rather, they just don’t think that there’s any need to segregate things-produced-by-humans off as a category wholly separate and distinct from the corresponding category of things-not-produced-by-humans. Likewise, most/all scientists don’t think they need to invent any spiffylicious new tools and techniques to investigate stuff in the category things-produced-by-humans, because the boring old tools and techniques which work for investigating things-not-produced-by-humans, are just as effective when used to investigate things-produced-by-humans. So I’m curious to know why you think ‘non-natural’, in your sense, is a distinction that’s worth bothering to make in the first place?
Groovy. Can you, like, identify any of those things which you would deem ‘beyond’ ‘natural’ or ‘more than just’ ‘natural’? I’m curious to know if you’ve got anything in mind besides category errors, inappropriate reifications, and other such intellectual sins.
Gregory, I didn’t ask my question because I don’t understand what ‘culture’ is. So while I appreciate your attempt to educate me by suggesting these references, I’m pleased to report that I already have a good grasp on the foundations of social science. I asked my question because.I wanted to be clear how you specifically are using the term ‘natural’ vs. ‘non-natural.’ You didn’t directly answer that question, but your answer nonetheless gives some hints.
As other posters have also now surmised, you seem to be using those terms to distinguish between ‘natural science’ and ‘social science’. But that is an odd usage, at least in the context of this thread. In fact, it is largely irrelevant to this thread. The fact that ‘culture’ is primarily the object of study for ‘social’ science rather than ‘natural’ science in no way implies that ‘culture’ is not natural. You would be making a semantic mistake to think that; that is, unless you’re asserting some type of dualism, in which case you would need to argue for that explicitly. But such a argument is not generally found in the authors you mentioned.
The question of whether science can study the supernatural is meaningless.
Supernatural = that which science cannot study.
Can science study that which science cannot study? No.
End of discussion.
Here is a belated long answer to several questions and statements made in this thread.
Elizabeth started the thread stating that methodological naturalism (MN) “underlies the methodology that we call science.” Later she spoke of “methodological naturalism, as in the working assumption that scientists make about the world in order to predict things.” Then she quoted Wikipedia, which states: “all scientific endeavors—all hypotheses and events—are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events,” adding that this is “more or less the definition I have been assuming.” In other words, science studies ‘nature-only’ because it is naturalistic – it sees nothing other than nature that *could* be studied. Elizabeth sticks with this definition when she says “Science occupies the domain of natural explanations.”
Still later, Elizabeth admitted she is ‘not wild about’ MN (or what I suggested as more accurate of her statements: science applies ‘methodological probabilism’) and also that “‘methodological naturalism’ is a poor term.” Thus, her suggestion: “now that I realise that the term [MN] appears to denote different things to different people, I will avoide it.” So, the main argument in the OP is deserted.
However, she seemed unwilling to go further on what giving up MN would mean and instead resorted to her earlier position: “No, I don’t accept that scientific methods can study extra-natural things.” So, which is it, does ‘science’ study ‘nature-only’ or is it broader than that?
“I think that in order to study non/extra/super-natural things we would have to violate this assumption. That would be fine, but it would mean that we cannot then use scientific methodology.” – Elizabeth
Here is a crux in the argument: are ‘non-‘ ‘extra-‘ and ‘super-natural’ properly lumped together as one, or does distinguishing them offer anything of value?
A basic overview: Natural sciences study natural things. Physical sciences study physical things. ‘Other’ sciences study ‘other’ things. Is there a problem with this understanding of ‘science,’ once folks realise that the Anglo-American is not the only option available? Russians study ‘historical sciences’ and ‘economic sciences’ (as do the Swedes, in the name of Alfred Nobel). Notice please that I am not pulling the ID approach of seeking to add ‘intelligent causes’ in biology, just widening the view of ‘science’ beyond the myopia of ‘nature-only.’
I asked to Neil Rickert: “Is it then your contention, Neil, that the ‘more specialized’ meaning of ‘science’ in English usage refers to *nature-only*?” His answer was: “No. It is my contention that science studies whatever it usefully can study using its methods. It tends to then apply the term ‘nature’ to what it studies.”
O.k. then, so it would seem that ‘science’ *can* in principle study more than *nature-only,* but that it has ‘tendencies’ based on…what? Based on who pretends or is claiming at the moment to speak for ‘science’? I.e. naturalists tend to speak for science, but not socialists or humanists?
The IDists have got it skewed also. Same reason: Anglo-American philosophy of science disallows ‘science’ of ‘non-natural’ or ‘extra-natural’ things and thus, the ‘science-only-naturalistic’ dilemma being played out here. This is at the heart of why MN makes little sense – it is privileges one feature of reality and disallows people to understand/know that other features of reality may be both non-natural and positively real at the same time.
Elizabeth wrote: “we might agree that ‘naturalism’ has problems as a philosophy.” Well, I’d be glad if we do. In my view, all ‘naturalisms’ are ideologies, without exception. There is no ‘merely methodological’ brand of ‘naturalism’ because the ideology trumps the methodology.
Elizabeth also wrote that “science is basically a prediction method.” Neil Rickert added: “Science simply studies those aspects of reality that are predictable.” In such a case, is space made for science to study ‘predictable’ things that are ‘other’ than ‘natural,’ based on a non-naturalistic reading of reality? Or is it not?
Elizabeth asked me: “So how do you suggest we investigate non-natural phenomena scientifically?”
The more important question, it seems to me, as my challenge to ‘naturalism’ as ideology indicates, is simply “can we investigate non-natural phenomena scientifically?” My answer, along with those in the German-Russian-Chinese framework, is: Yes, we can. The ‘how’ question can be looked at in the article linked below and in thousands of others like it.
Neil Rickert wrote: “Science has no a priori commitment to only study nature.” Would anyone suggest though, that this is not so when one is pre-committed to the ideology of naturalism? Iow, does the ideology of naturalism not determine what counts as ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ (or ‘imaginary’) for naturalists in their understanding of the universe? Is it not then important for scientists, and for natural scientists especially to reflexively distinguish their ‘science’ from their ‘ideology,’ so that ‘naturalism’ does not engulf their public pronouncements about what other sciences can and do study?
I’d like to take a shot at a question by Mike Elzinga: “How can one not think about natural phenomena and processes linking to other physical phenomena that researchers can check and agree about among themselves?”
It is a good question. Look for the positive, non-natural ‘aspects’ of a phenomenon or process. Ideas are not physical, though they may be manifest in physical change or movement by people. Don’t forget the people, don’t dehumanise; this will allow you to discover extra-natural human creations or artefacts quite easily, that can be studied using reflexive methods appropriate for social and cultural sciences. If you are ‘doing natural science’ then your task is of course to study natural phenomena and processes. But, as Herbert Simon understood, this does not preclude distinguishing artificial things and natural things and that there are good reasons for doing this.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=400144§ion=2.6.1.
Elizabeth finally met my *multiple scientific methods* observation, saying “Obviously there are multple scientific methods,” but that they are “all grounded in empiricism,” which once again is an ideological position. There are non-empirical features involved in ‘doing science’ too.
Joe wrote: “ID contrasts the natural with the artificial.” (Actually, I don’t think it does much work on this; it rather sees biology as ‘divine technology.’)
Elizabeth replied: “‘natural’ when used in contrast to ‘artificial’ has a different meaning than when contrasted with ‘immaterial’.” … “I entirely agree we can distinguish natural objects from artefacts That does not mean that I think the artefacts are ‘immaterial’.”
I agree with Elizabeth. One needn’t think that artefacts are immaterial, but simply understand that they are not-natural; they do not ‘organically evolve,’ like biological things. This admission is all that is needed to open a ‘new/other’ category for ‘science’ to study that is ‘extra-natural’ or ‘non-natural.’ Amen! It is a simple point that perhaps some of you think is not worth making, while for those involved in the philosophy of science, social sciences or systems thinking, it is indeed a crucial distinction.
Notice please, some people reject this distinction, e.g. as Flint wrote: “Of course culture is natural…in the world of [natural] science, there is no distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’,” and when Ian Musgrave paraded the fallacy that “social science studies entirely natural things. I don’t know where you get the idea that culture is ‘non-natural’, it is 100% natural.” This is unadulterated myopic ‘naturalism’ which is only to be swallowed (with caution) as an ideology; there is no ‘scientific’ explanation for conflating ‘natural’ with ‘artificial’ or ‘extra-natural’ things. It is obvious to most rational people that ‘technology’ does not grow in one’s garden, like an organism.
Then again, Ian clarified his presupposition in saying what he did: “Humans culture and artefacts are 100% natural in the sense of the word ‘natural’ used in ‘methodological naturalism’.” Ian bases his views on MN, so his conflation can be understood. Since I reject the ideology of MN, as do many people who are educated in PoS, it is understandable why Ian and I disagree and why I and my colleagues are nevertheless free to study culture and artefacts as “more than just natural,” without being dictated to by naturalists.
Really, folks, the first item of agenda in this conversation should be to answer the question “Are you (or do you consider yourself) a ‘naturalist’?” before even beginning to speak about what MN might mean. Skeptics are not all ‘naturalists,’ of course, nor vice versa!
“one of the reasons I infer that an artefact is an artefact is if I have material evidence of the material existence of a designer or artisan” – Elizabeth
Yes, here we are agreed, though we also often have ideological or formal causal evidence, in addition to material evidence of ‘designers’ and ‘artisans.’ That human designers think, feel, intuit, hope, dream, desire, etc. is part of the ‘designing’ process. Again, this is something that ID does not account for and I’ve seen no indication that the IDM understands the difference between the study of ‘designing processes’ and disallowing the study of designing processes. It is just not something on their collective radar.
llanitedave made a fair point, that “the existence of human artifacts doesn’t support intelligent design in biology.”
Yes, we are likewise with Elizabeth agreed. It does however support ‘design’ theory in human-social sciences, which is perhaps more important in solving the ‘controversy’ over evolution and evolutionism.
Elizabeth asked: “Could you give me a citation, in particular for ‘reflexive science’?”
Sure, here’s a good place to start (though, the tradition goes much deeper than Burawoy):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24800493/Burawoy-Critical-Sociology-A-Dialogue-Between-Two-Sciences
The point here is that once a person recognizes ‘reflexive science’ as an alternative to ‘positive science,’ the playing field for discussions of ‘science, philosophy and theology or worldview’ is levelled or at least opened. Once one realises that they are speaking with an ideological ‘naturalist’ who is contending that ‘everything is natural,’ they can easily recognise the bias in their dialogue partner and take naturalistic contentions with a grain of salt. There is no need to believe that MN ‘defines’ the world of science, just as there is no need to accept the IDM’s redefinition of science to include ‘intelligent causes’ in natural sciences, without studying the efficient or material causes or the processes of ‘intelligent designing.’ There are better ways of perceiving reality than either of these options (and this might also include recognizing that human beings have or possess a spiritual component, beyond their/our material natures)!
Cubist also made a suggestion:
Scientists (by which he supposedly meant ‘natural-physical scientists’), “just don’t think that there’s any need to segregate things-produced-by-humans off as a category wholly separate and distinct from the corresponding category of things-not-produced-by-humans…So I’m curious to know why you think ‘non-natural’, in your sense, is a distinction that’s worth bothering to make in the first place?”
This question is what I’ve aimed to answer in this long thread. The history of ideas makes a distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ things. As a human-social scientist, armed with a reflexive scientific approach, my contribution along with colleagues is to balance the playing field so that ‘naturalism’ can no longer control the dialogue and so that we may better understand the human condition and thus to promote human flourishing. If we speak of ‘human-made’ problems as simply ‘natural’ phenomena, we are likely to come up with far fewer solutions to offer that can change the world with improvements for the present and future. Isn’t that, after all, what ‘science’ is all about?
Science is both successful and replete with failures. One cannot argue seriously that science only succeeds, when the record is plainly against that scenario. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down – ‘scientism’ – the ideology of those who elevate Science (and sometimes Reason too) into a worldview, which people usually ‘use as a crutch’ to validate their career choice in natural-physical sciences. There is nothing sexy in scientism!
All I’m doing, folks, is showing that ‘natural science’ has its limitations, that MN is a myopic view of ‘science,’ and that alternative ‘sciences’ study real artefacts and phenomena in our everyday human lives. Those who continue to promote MN and ‘scientism’ are advised to overcome their denial of this reality, as it seems Elizabeth is doing.
Respectfully, skeptically, and more…
Gregory
MN is “the most paranoid appeal to a scientific consensus to defend against an impending Dark Age” … “‘Methodological naturalism’, despite its philosophical sounding name, has no clear meaning outside of attempts to demonstrate that creationism and ID are non-scientific. Professional philosophers, not least those who hold no brief for creationism, have squirmed at the apparent manufacture of a pseudo-doctrine customised to restrict the ranks of scientists. This so-called principle conflates two 20th-century pro-science movements: ‘logical positivism’, which defined science in purely procedural terms as a method for testing theories, and ‘metaphysical naturalism’, which defined science as a world view that admits only causes like the ones already observed in nature.” – Steve Fuller (2008)
“science can only study natural things, because natural things includes everything that can be demonstrated to exist, or gives any testable evidence of existing.” – Flint
“It is natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things” – G.K. Chesterton
“It is salutary to curb the scientific hubris that has dominated our culture during this [the 20th] century. Science has undoubtedly achieved wonderful things, but it has a dark side. The unbridled arrogance of science is part of what lies behind nuclear weapons, pollution, unnecessary animal (and human) experimentation. Showing that science has its limits is helpful in qualifying its image as all-conquering and invincible.” – Colin McGinn (1999)
Another quotation to add supporting the thesis:
“’Science’ is a specific, human endeavor, not a limitless enterprise for answering everything, and we would do well to give it a well-defined home within the larger sphere of rationality.” – Robert J. Asher
Too long. It would have been better to break it up into smaller parts.
I am only responding because you mention me.
If there is a bias, it is that scientists want to succeed. So they are biased toward studying what gives them results.
I don’t think anybody speaks for science. People at most speak for the way that they view science.
One cannot have an a priori commitment to only study nature, unless one begins with an a priori definition or characterization of nature and/or natural. Some people might have there own personal definitions, but I don’t think there is any broad agreement on what we mean by those terms.
The fact is that scientists do study the paranormal. Usually these studies are dropped after a while, when the investigators find that they are not getting any useful results. The fact that there are such studies suggests that there really isn’t a rigid commitment to naturalism.
There is always the problem of finding the right level at which to study any phenomenon. My grandfather was a physician and suffer all his adult life from ulcers. During his lifetime, ulcers were widely regarded as a social and psychological problem. The cause was stress.
A decade or so after he died, a primary cause was found to be a bacterium. The holistic approach failed and the mechanistic approach succeeded. At least that’s the current story.
I bring this up not to push one approach over another, but to suggest that it is difficult to know in advance what approach will gain traction. Science engages in reduction, but what is the most useful level of reduction in a specific instance?
This is a very difficult question for a researcher who must commit time and money to a problem, but for bystanders like me, it is easy. I have the benefit of hindsight. I can look at what has worked in the past. It is effortless.
But from my hindsight I have developed certain biases, and I am not hesitant to call them biases. My own training is in the social sciences, so I am not opposed to them. My own training and experience has led me to favor empirical approaches, even to positivism.
I would be interested in seeing you provide a specific example of a solution to any problem that was missed by empiricism. I see thousands of your words, but nothing tangible. What specifically do you mean by extra-natural?