What, exactly qualifies as naturalism? And what did C. S. Lewis think he had refuted?

 In defending the central argument in the third chapter of Miracles, we have to ask exactly what Lewis meant by naturalism when he said that naturalism is self-refuting. David Kyle Johnson thinks there is a standard definition of naturalism--an entity is natural if it is part of the universe, and naturalism is the view that only the universe exists. It has nothing to do with whether mental states are fundamental to the universe or not. Hence an argument that shows that there must be basic mental causes would not be sufficient to refute naturalism, since there are versions of naturalism where this is not denied. 

David Kyle Johnson, "Retiring the Argument from Reason," Philosophia Christ Vol 20, no. 2., (2018). 

But, in fact, the difficulty in defining naturalism is widely noted, and so far as I can tell, there is no standard definition. Alvin Plantinga defines naturalism as the view that there is no God, or no being like God. But what is God-like enough to be a problem for naturalism? 

Rickabaugh and Boras state that naturalism is a thesis about ontology, but is also a thesis about explanation. They note: 

The distinctively scientific mode of explanation is subpersonal and mechanistic.16 To give a mechanistic explanation of some phenomena (for example, change in location) is to cite a property of an object (for example, the mass of a body) together with a natural law (for example, Newton’s inverse-square law) describing how things with that property regularly behave. Such laws describe the most general patterns of variation in nature, based on the inherent tendencies of things. Mechanistic explanations thus tell us what we can expect to happen automatically (deterministically or probabilistically) and, as it were, of its own accord. That is, whether prior events strictly necessitate or fix the chances of a future event, still that event is the automatic result of nonrational causes. Deterministic laws predict a fixed outcome for phenomena that fall under their jurisdiction. Probabilistic laws, by contrast, assign a probability to all possible outcomes, and leave it to chance to resolve which comes to pass. Mechanistic explanations thus tell us that some phenomenon occurs because the state of the universe and the laws of nature necessitate it or make it somewhat likely. Here is our point: the central idea of naturalism (at least with respect to explanation) is that mechanistic explanation is in principle complete, that is, sufficient to explain everything that needs explaining.

16. The account of scientific explanation in this paragraph and the next follows Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 26–35, which is in turn based on the classic exposition in C. G. Hempel and P. Oppenheim, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” Philosophy of Science 14 (1948): 135–7

Brandon Rickabaugh and Todd Boras, "The Argument from Reason and Mental Causal Drainage: A Reply to Peter van Inwagen," Philosophia Christi vol 19, no. 2, 384. (2017). 

Lewis presents naturalism and supernaturalism as two options, so based on that you might think that he would be happy with Johnson's definition. However, Lewis also has a chapter on "Christianity and Religion" in which he argues against pantheistic views, and there he does not use an argument from reason. These pantheistic views include a position he once held, and the position he adopted once he became persuaded that naturalistic views "leave no room for an adequate theory of knowledge." That is, he became an Absolute Idealist. According to Absolute idealism, God is not distinct from the universe, and so by Johnson's definition, it qualifies as a form of naturalism. 

In any event, in the name of naturalism many people hold a position that says that the base level is mechanistic (in the sense described), the base level is causally closed, and whatever else there is supervenes on the base level. Most of them call the base level physics, which makes them physicalists. If these positions are refuted by the argument from reason, then it is hard to call the argument from reason a failure, even if it leaves space for people to depart from that position without embracing theism. After all, that is just what C. S. Lewis did when he was first convinced that naturalism as he understood it did not hold up. As he said "I didn't want there to be a God, I didn't want the universe to be like that."  Oh wait, with a tense change, that's Thomas Nagel. I apologize for the confusion. 

Mentalistic and Non-Mentalistic World-Views

The argument from reason begins by defining two world-view types: mentalistic world-views, according to which mental states are basic causes, and non-mentalistic world-views, according to which no mental states are basic causes. Christian theism is a world-view according to which basic causes are mental. If God chooses to create the world, there is no underlying non-mental explanation for this creation. God, it is supposed, creates the world because it is good to do so, and there is no underlying explanation in terms of blind causes. Let us take a different case, that of rocks falling down a mountain in an avalanche. When the rocks fall, they do not miss my head because they don’t think it would be nice to hit me, or hit me because they think I have it coming to me. Rather, the rocks blindly, with no regard to the interests of the people who may or may not be hit. On non-mentalistic world-views, the world is a bottom as blind as a bunch of rocks falling down the mountain. However, through the pressures of natural selection, perhaps we find things in the world that imitate that which we would ordinarily ascribe to a designer. If we hold to a non-mentalistic world-view, we might say that “the purpose of your eye is to see” but what we mean is that features of the eye were selected for because of their visual advantage. There is a mentalistic explanation on the surface, but dig deeper, and “mind” is analyzed out. By contrast, on a theistic world-view, even if the falling of the rocks in the avalanche was not specifically pre-ordained by God, at least the physical laws and physical objects are the product of intelligent design.

An excellent debate from a couple of years ago

I re-read this exchange between J. D. Walters and Blue Devil Knight and was impressed by it. In spite of some acrimony, it is one of the best blog discussions I have seen on the relevant issues. It is illustrative of the difference between a naturalistic perspective and an anti-naturalistic one, and why it's so difficult to resolve the debate surrounding naturalism.

Naturalism without Physicalism?

Doctor Logic asked me what I thought the difference was between naturalism and physicalism. I think for anything to be "naturalistic" in any recognizable sense, it looks as if it has to have the characteristics of the physical that I mention: absence at the most basic level of purpose, intentionality, subjectivity, and normativity. It must be physical in at least these senses if it is naturalism is to have any meaning.

Sometimes people say that a physicalist will not allow abstract entities, but a naturalist can. But that's not going to do us any good in providing a naturalist response to the argument from reason. The AFR is about explaining how we come to have certain mental states. What do those abstract entities have to do with our coming to have mental states of a certain kind?

D. M. Armstrong once wrote; "I suppose that if the principles involved (in analysis at the physical level) were completely different from the current prinicples of physics, in particular if they involved appeal to mental entities, such as purposes, we might count the analysis as a falsification of naturalism."

Some further responses to exapologist

When I meant "avoiding theism" I wasn't making a statement about your motives, I was making a statement about what one needs in order to define naturalism. One goal of a good definition of X is that it excludes paradigm cases of non-X. But surely there has to be more to naturalism than avoiding theism.

You had written:

So why isn't this sort of proposal naturalistically acceptable? Granted, it may not me *materialistically* acceptable, but who cares? Why must a non-theist be wedded to *materialism*? Of course, they need not.

This passage makes it sound as if in order for something to be naturalistically acceptable it has to be acceptable for a non-theist. Of course, absolute idealists are not theists per se.

I'm waiting for Absolute Idealism to make a comeback. If it happens, you heard it here first.

Extreme naturalism or consistent naturalism?

Paul Draper wrote: "Extreme naturalism" is the conjunction of naturalism with the thesis that

X: Either (i) beliefs don't exist (eliminativism) or (ii) they exist but they don't affect behavior at all (epiphenomenalism) or (iii) they exist and they affect behavior but not by virtue of their content (semantic epiphenomenalism) or (iv) they exist and they affect behavior by virtue of their content, but to have a certain content just is to display a certain set of third-person properties (reductive materialism).

Now is this extreme naturalism, as Draper seems to think, or is this just consistent naturalism, as I think. I think that the causal closure of the physical leads to this conclusion, while the denial of the causal closure of the physical results in an inconsistent naturalism.

Draper adds: Sensible naturalism is just naturalism conjoined with the denial of X. In other words, it conjoins naturalism with

S: Beliefs exist, they affect behavior by virtue of their contents, and a belief's having a particular content is not the same as its displaying a certain set of third-person properties.

In which case the physical isn't causally closed, and from the point of view of the physical, miracles are occurring. It looks tempting to go there given the difficulties for each of the other types of naturalism, but it isn't going to work. If all the naturalist is trying to do is avoid traditional theism, yeah maybe. If what you are trying to do is maintain a position consistent with the views traditionally ascribed to natuarlists, I don't think so.

A further response to Guminski on naturalism: Must naturalists accept causal closure?

So so long as the entities in question are embodied, we are still within the real of naturalism?
What that means is so long as there is a material base of some sort, objects can do all sorts of things that contradict the laws which ordinarily govern those same entities, and we are still good naturalists?
I should add that certainly the gods of Greece were no doubt embodied beings (they, for example, could literally mate with humans). The Mormon god is a physical being. Does naturalism exclude LDS theology? Some more orthodox theists accept the idea of an embodied God. Are they naturalists?
To my mind physicalness requires being governed by physical laws. Can you still call something an electron if it starts not acting like an electron.
We also don't have a definition of embodiedness. What is it for something to be embodied? Does it mean "having a location in space and time" or does it mean something else.
But really, this is a question for naturalists. Can you be a naturalist without accepting a causal closure principle of some kind? There is a sense in which I shouldn't be telling a naturalist that he is not a naturalist. I can say what I mean by naturalist and then argue against the doctrine so defined.

Reply to Steve on Naturalism

I include the comments from this old post because Steve Lovell has an interesting response here that I intend to respond to. Though looking at it it looks as if Jason gave the response I was going to give.

Steve: As you know Lewis opposed reductionistic accounts of even physical phenomena. The "physical thing" we call the sunbeam has nonphysical properties which have to be siphoned off in order to make it a physicalistic account. The concept of the physical is supposed to be a) mechanistic, and b) closed and c) everything else has to supervene on that. At least that's the Hasker-Reppert definition of physicalism, which can be expanded to come up with an account of what naturalism is supposed to be. (We are happy to solve the physicalists' problem of defining themselves for them, and I have it on the authority of Blue Devil Knight that our definition is a good one).
If you look at even secular philosophers like Nagel who take the toolshed distinction seriously, we find that they push the limits of what is acceptable as physicalism. Nagel seems to have broken out of physicalism even if he hasn't found his way to theism (neither did Lewis when he accepted the argument), and while Searle tries to be a materialist, I think most people on both sides of the materialist debate think he fails to do so. The strongest physicalists like Dennett, Churchland, and company, including ordinary functionalists like the early Putnam try their best to explain the distinction away.
Materialism is an attempt to say that the world as analyzed by the senses and the method of science is the ultimate reality, and that everything else is a byproduct. Insofar as they are consistent materialists, they have to try to undercut Lewis's looking at-looking along distinction. you can't press it into the service of physicalism without begging the question.

7 Comments:

• At 1:41 AM, Blue Devil Knight said…

  I like your definition for the most part, depending on what you mean by 'mechanistic.' That term tends to invoke pictures of determinism and clockwork universes in people's heads.
  
  If quantum mechanics or quantum field theory [or whatever possibly indeterministic nomic regularities we find in basic physics] count as mechanistic, then your definition is fine.
  
  Merleau-Ponty, in his criticism of naturalistic theories of perception, spends many pages discussing 'the gaze', visually experiencing the world such that the biology, the meat, of the eyes, is invisible. I have always considered it a kind of knowing-how versus knowing-that kind of thing, but there is more to it than that (knowing how to ride a bike doesn't imply anything about consciousness, for instance, while knowing how to use one's gaze, in his sense, does).

• At 8:00 AM, Steve Lovell said…

  Vic, I agree that it's difficult to call Nagel and Searle Naturalists in your sense (or any decent sense), but I still don't quite see why the Naturalist can't accept the toolshed distinction and use it in Naturalism's service. Of course, my own argument in your "The Trouble with Materialism" entry, suggests a possible reason why ... would you accept this argument?
  
  Also, I have a difficulty with some of your explanations of what Naturalism involves. You seem to imply that if Naturalism is true then all concepts must have an acceptable Naturalistic analysis.
  
  Let's take a common case. We may offer the following analysis of "Red" ...
  
  (R1) Something is red if and only if it is such as to cause the sensation "Red" in normal observers under normal conditions.
  (R2) Things cause the sensation "Red" in normal observers under normal conditions if and only if they have surface reflectance properties XYZ.
  (R3) Something is red if and only if it has surface reflectance properties XYZ.
  
  R1 is offered as an analysis in the sense of a conceptual analysis. R2 is an empirical statement. R3 is a naturalistic reduction.
  
  I can't help but feel that you sometimes confuse "conceptual analysis" with "reduction". Can't a naturalist legitimately offer R1 as an analysis and then go on to give R3 as a reduction motivated by that analysis?
  
  Why shouldn't the case of intentionality be similar? If Carrier makes constant use of intentional concepts in his explanation of intentionality, are you sure he isn't at the R1-like stage here rather than the R3-like stage?
  
  Does (R1)-(R3) offer an acceptable Naturalistic reduction of Redness? If not, why not?
  If so, then presumably the difficulty with similar reductions for intentionality etc is that the R1-like stage turns them into secondary qualities, and intenionality and other mental phenomena can't be thought of that way. The reason for this would be that with colour you can separate out the bit that's in the world (the surface reflectance) and the bit that's in our heads (the experienced quality of redness), but with mental phenomena it's all in our heads to start with.
  
  But "in our heads" has two very different possible meanings: "In our brains" and "in our minds". Why doesn't this give us somewhere to siphon things off to?
  
  Ah, I see ... because to siphon the mind to the mind is the same as not siphoning at all. But does that necessarily make the mind a non-naturalistic thing? Couldn't an R1-R3-like reduction still obtain for the mind even in the absence of anywhere different to siphon the mind off to?
  
  If so, this would make the Nagel/Searle mysterionism (or whatever it's being called these days) look about right.
  
  Not sure where these leaves me ...

• At 9:30 AM, Victor Reppert said…

  BDK : Mechanistic in my sense means free of meaning, free of subjectivity, free of purpose, and free of normativity. It does not mean deterministic.
  
  SL: But "in our heads" has two very different possible meanings: "In our brains" and "in our minds". Why doesn't this give us somewhere to siphon things off to?
  
  VR: Because you can indulge in a lot of loose talk about "the brain" but to serve its proper role in a physicalistic analysis of the world it can't have any fundmantally mental properties. All of those properties have to be nonmental, and the mental properties have to be systemic add-ups of physical properties, and these properties have to not be mind-dependent. In the final analysis, the serpent is chasing its tail.

• At 10:14 AM, Jason said…

  Steve,
  
  (Note: I left a bit of a different reply--short I promise {g}--back in the previous thread, too.)
  
  
  {{Does (R1)-(R3) offer an acceptable Naturalistic reduction of Redness? If not, why not?}}
  
  I don't have any problem with R1-R3 _so far as it goes_. I'm relatively sure few (if any) Naturalists would have a problem with it, either.
  
  But this cannot be a sufficient reduction for purposes of 'naturalistically' explaining human behavior in recognizing 'red', if only because the "if and only if" leaves out pretty much all discussion of what's happening in the receiver. The conclusion is only about the reflective surfaces over there. (And I expect most Naturalists, unless they're just being casual in conversation, would have a similar problem with how far it goes.)
  
  JRP

• At 11:28 AM, Anonymous said…

  "Mechanistic in my sense means free of meaning, free of subjectivity, free of purpose, and free of normativity. It does not mean deterministic. "
  
  I, as a naturalist, would not accept that as a legitimate meaning for "mechanistic." It would certainly seem to rule out the possibility of those complex biological mechanisms we commonly refer to as animals.
  Sam

• At 12:27 PM, Victor Reppert said…

  What I mean is that these systems are mechanistic at the most basic level of analysis. Whatever of these things are are system byproducts at the organizational level. The real causation in the universe goes on without reference to them.

• At 3:40 PM, Blue Devil Knight said…

  anonymous: I think Victor's characterization of naturalism is quite inclusive, and I wouldn't want to call someone who denied it a (metaphysical) naturalist.
  
  Victor isn't saying that all properties are physical, but that all properties must supervene on the physical. E.g., the property of being a heart or a lung is a biological property, but ultimately they supervene on the properties of physical objects (even if they aren't identical to or reducible to such physical properties).
  
  For those not in philosophy, property X supervenes on property (or properties) Y iff a difference in X implies a difference in Y. Equivalently, two things identical wrt Y are identical wrt X. So, two things with identical physical properties must have identical mental properties (and these physical properties may include the history of the objects, otherwise Twin Earth refutes supervenience).

Mapping Dualism and Materialism

This post is redated and expanded. Sometimes, when I hear discussion of dualism vs. materialism, I have to wonder how, exactly, the map is being drawn between those positions. What exactly is going to count as dualism or materialism. Just as materialists wonder if defenders of materialism have read or understood the major figures in materialist philosophy, so I sometimes wonder if defenders of materialism are familiar with the different varieties of dualism that have been defended in recent years. For example, William Hasker's defense of dualism, found in The Emergent Self, is certainly far from insensitive to the developments in neuroscience, and is attentive to the close correlation between mental states and brain states that have been mapped by neuroscientists. In fact, neuroscience provides the primary basis for Hasker's defense of an "emergent" dualism as opposed to a traditional Cartesian dualism. See especially the discussion on pp. 153-157 and 197-198, and there is even a footnote reference to D. Frank Benson's The Neurology of Thinking (Oxford 1994). I have yet to see anyone grapple with Hasker's book from a materialist perspective, which is too bad. I guess I've done more to solicit materialist response than he has, but he really does offer an across-the-board case against materialism and a well-developed anti-materialist theory to challenge it, and I really didn't do that. It isn't clear to me that we know, without further clarification, what is meant by terms like "materialism," "substance dualism," "property dualism," and other terms that have been used so often that we are lulled into thinking that we know exactly what they mean. I provided a typology of positions in the philosophy of mind in my review of Kevin Corcoran ed. Soul, Body and Survival (Cornell, 2001). (Faith and Philosophy July 2004, 393-399. Standard or Cartesian dualism is committed to these four claims: 1. The mental is sui generis, existing independently of the physical and not in any way reducible to it. 2. Mental states inhere in a thinking thing or substance, not in a bundle. 3. Mental states do not have a location in space. 4. Souls are created individually by God ex nihilo,; they do not emerge from pre-existing material states. However, I would consider myself a dualist and have some doubts about both 3 and 4. William Hasker and Brian Leftow would be examples of non-standard dualists whose views are represented in the Corcoran volume. Hasker is an emergent dualist and Leftow is a Thomistic dualist. Standard materialism requires three theses: 1. Physics is mechanistic and is to be described in purely non-mental terms. 2. Physics is causally closed. 3. All states that are not physical supervene on physical states. Typically a materialism, for example, should not maintain that there is such a thing as libertarian free will, because libertarianism requires the existence of fundamental purposive explanations. But Peter van Inwagen, for instance, calls himself a materialist in the philosophy of mind but also is a defender of libertarian free will. Lynne Baker calls herself a materialist but her first book on the philosophy of mind was an attack on physicalism. So there are nonstandard forms of materialism, as well as nonstandard forms of dualism, and many "Christian materialists" actually reject one of more of the central theses of standard materialism. Good examples would be Lynne Rudder Baker, who calls herself a materialist but whose first book on the philosophy of mind was an attack on physicalism, and Peter van Inwagen, who believes in libertarian free will, (See his book An Essay on Free Will, from which is inconsistent with strict physicalism. I keep having to say this over and over again, especially when Babinski keeps pointing out that there must be something wrong with my arguments against physicalism because there are Christian philosophers who believe in a materialist philosophy of mind. First of all, if this were true then you could refute any argument for materialism on the ground that some atheist philosophers, like C. J. Ducasse and J. McTaggart believed in life after death, and that atheist existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was a Cartesian dualist, or that my college metaphysics teacher, Ted Guleserian, is both and atheist and a mind-body dualist. Now any of these may have good arguments for what they believe, but merely pointing out that they exist does not provide evidence for anything at all. In my book there is a detailed definition of physicalism, and a slightly broader defintion for naturalism. My arguments are directed against just those positions. Until I get a clear idea of what a person holds, it will not be clear to me if that person is a materialist or a dualist, or maybe a little of both. I keep pointing out, but apparently some people choose not to pay attention, that I could qualify as a materialist on some definitions. (In fact I once heard a paper by a dualist accusing C. S. Lewis of being a non-reductive materialist!) The kind of dualism William Hasker defends in his book The Emergent Self is called Emergent Dualism. I would appreciate it if people would kindly refrain from stereotyping my positions.

Posts on defining naturalism

These are the posts I have done on defining naturalism.

Reply to Weekend Fisher

Hi there

I'm an occasional reader finding my way here through CADRE Comments, with an interest in the "Dangerous Idea" to a greater degree and the Lewis/Anscombe debate to a lesser degree, only as it relates to the larger question.

I have to say that, on review of the argument, I disagree with Lewis about whether a naturalistic universe necessarily leads to a distrust of mind.

I'm not what you would call a naturalist, more what you would call a Christian with a high view of material creation.

I was wondering if I could ask you one thing: if you had to state succintly the strongest version of that argument that you knew, if you were trying to show me logically that logic itself or reason itself falls apart in a naturalistic world, what would you say? What would be your opening move?

Are you interested in exchanging posts to explore a little more? I'm interested in hammering out the argument to see where it goes.

Take care & God bless
WF

There is a first step in the argument, which is getting a definition of a naturalistic world-view, the proper target for the argument. I have a definition for a naturalistic world-view: A naturalistic world-view has there characteristic:

1) At the level of the most fundamental particles, the universe is free of purpose, free of normativity, free of intentionality (aboutness) and fully describable from a third-person perspective. In short, there is a "physical" level which is complete mechanistic, not in the sense of being deterministic, but in the sense of being purposeless.

2) That level is causally closed. There is nothing at any other level of analysis the provides an independent cause of events over and above the physical level.

3) Whatever else exists supervenes on the physical. Given the state of they physical, every other level (chemical, biological, psychological, sociological), must be the way that it is.

Now the first thing I want to ask is that if the "naturalism" you have in mind to defend meets this description, or not?

I'm not sure I want to talk about distrusting reason. I vastly prefer Best Explanation versions of the Argument from Reason as opposed to Skeptical Threat arguments. There is reason, the question is whether the kind of universe I just described can explain it. (No skyhooks allowed, just cranes).