Naturalism or naturalisms

La cosmovisión naturalista (The Naturalist Worldview) is a monumental book, written in Spanish by Moisés Pérez Marcos, about naturalist philosophies. As with the multiverse, of which there are many different theories, usually incompatible with each other, there are (almost) as many naturalistic philosophies as there are naturalistic philosophers. In other words, they don’t agree among themselves.

The first thing to do when confronted with naturalism is to try to define it and differentiate it from related worldviews:

• Naturalism: A doctrine (a philosophical system) that considers nature as our only reference to reality. This is the definition of the Spanish official dictionary (RAE), which adds: and which, consequently, attempts to explain this without resorting to the supernatural or the transcendent. According to this definition, the fundamental objective of the naturalistic worldview would be to explain the world without resorting to God.
• Materialism: A philosophical system that affirms that only matter exists. It is, therefore, a stricter version of naturalism. In turn, it can be divided into two versions: reductionist materialism and emergentist materialism. Some naturalists claim that naturalism and materialism are identical.
• Physicalism: A philosophical system that states that everything that exists in the universe can be reduced to what’s physical. Consequently, mental things must be reduced to physical, and the methods of physics must also be applied in all human sciences. It is evident that physicalism is an even stricter version of naturalism, as it implies a reductionist view of nature.

On the other hand, there are two different approaches to naturalism:

• Ontological naturalism: It asserts that only natural beings exist. It denies, therefore, the existence of God and of every entity outside of nature. Ontological naturalism is essentially atheistic.
• Epistemological naturalism: It maintains that only the methods of the natural sciences can achieve true knowledge. This statement entails three important problems: a) the justification of ethical norms; b) the origin of mathematical and logical truths, which are not the result of experimentation or observation; c) common sense knowledge, which we all have about the world without being able to justify it. Naturalists differ considerably in their answers to these problems.

The book approaches the study of naturalism in the following way:

• In the introduction, it analyzes various naturalistic philosophies through their defenders and a few opposing. Remember that there are (almost) as many versions as there are naturalist philosophers. The chosen defenders are these: 1. Owen Flanagan (2006). 2. Jon Jacobs (2009). 3. David Papineau (1993-2007). 4. David Malet Armstrong (1968-1999). And 5. Ronald Giere (2006-2008). The dates in parentheses apply to the cited publications of these authors, which shows that most of them are modern, for they have published during the 21st century.
• The first part is dedicated to epistemological naturalism through five additional defenders, with three chapters dedicated to three of them: 1. Willard Quine (1952-1995). 2. Alvin Goldman (1967-2014). And 3. Hilary Kornblith (1993-2014).
• The second part focuses on ontological naturalism through three representative schools: 1. Radical naturalist metaphysics. 2. Physicalism. 3. Biologicism or biological determinism.



Thomas Nagel

• The third part reviews some criticisms of naturalism made by three important modern philosophers who can also be classified as naturalists, since none of them believe in the existence of God: Mary Midgley (1981-2014), Thomas Nagel (1974-2012), and Raymond Tallis (1991-2011). This situation is typical: there are so many naturalistic philosophies that their defenders fight each other. But these cases are especially strong, for they oppose some ideas that many other naturalists consider basic and unquestionable. I talked about Nagel in a previous post in this blog.  I’ll speak about Tallis in my next post.
• In the fourth part, the shortest, the book offers additional criticisms of naturalism and proposes alternatives based on phenomenology and hermeneutics, following Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Javier de Lorenzo, Alfredo Marcos, Juan Arana, and F. J. Soler Gil.

By adopting a restrictive epistemology that only accepts science as the origin of knowledge (scientism), naturalism opposes the history of philosophy, which over the centuries has pointed out three different sources for human knowledge: a) Authority, we know almost everything we know because someone has taught us. b) Experience, not just scientific, for this source also includes what we know through common sense, and even supernatural experiences. c) And reasoning, which generates new knowledge from previous knowledge. Furthermore, scientism leads naturalism to an intrinsic contradiction, because none of the sciences can demonstrate that only science can be the source of knowledge.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca