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:

Theories about self-consciousness

Svetlana before the mirror
Painting by Karl Briuliov

As I have said in other posts in this blog, the question of self-consciousness is more philosophical than scientific. In this regard, two great philosophical theories have coexisted since time immemorial:

·         Monism: Everything we can perceive, including consciousness, can be explained in terms of a single component: matter, in the broadest sense of the term, which also includes energy. In turn, monism can be classified into two different theories:

o   Reductionist Monism: It asserts that the entire functioning of the universe has a bottom-up explanation. In other words, if we knew enough about elementary particles and their properties, we could explain everything, including self-consciousness.

o   Emergentist Monism: It asserts that the lower level does not explain everything that happens at the higher level, since there are properties (including self-awareness) that only have a top-down explanation. That is to say, complex systems can have a behavior unpredictable in the bottom-up direction.

A Singular Universe

Javier Sánchez Cañizares is one of the contributors to the book Preguntas sobre Ciencia y Fe, published in 2014 and republished this year. In 2020, Javier has published a book in Spanish with the same title as this post, which can be considered as a book on philosophy of science at a high level of popularization. The goal of the book is to show that materialistic reductionism has no chance of providing a correct complete explanation, as our universe is singular because of several different reasons:

Mind and Cosmos

Thomas Nagel

Thomas Nagel, philosopher, professor at New York University and specialized in the philosophy of mind, has published a book (Mind and Cosmos) where he summarizes his argumentation against materialist reductionism, dominant in philosophy since the mid-nineteenth century. I have read the book in a Spanish translation made by the Seville professor Francisco Rodríguez Valls, with whom I have collaborated more than once.

The book provides strong arguments in support of the claim that materialistic reductionism cannot explain conscience, reason, and other mental elements without explaining them away. But since conscience and reason are the dominant elements of our worldview, the conclusion we should arrive at is that materialistic reductionism must be false.

The problem of human intentionality

A few weeks ago I had in another blog a debate that confronted me with three militant atheists who stood for materialist monism, which holds, among other things, that we are determined by our neurons, that consciousness is an irrelevant epiphenomenon and that free will is an illusion. In another post in this blog I have touched on that topic, mentioning the four philosophical theories that try to explain the conscience, one of which is materialist monism.

This is the argument I offered to defend dualism against materialistic monism:

Let’s tackle the problem of human intentionality. When I say: I'm going to lend money to the bank, so I’ll be paid interest, I’m saying that the reason why I’ll lend money to the bank is to get interest. This is the kind of cause that Aristotle called a final cause, because it is the goal toward which my action is directed, something that is located in the future. On the other hand, materialist monism says that the only cause of our actions is in the electric discharges of our neurons. This is what Aristotle called an efficient cause. Therefore, to explain the same phenomenon (my lending money to the bank), we are suggested two different causes: my intention and the sparks in my neurons, this second located in the present, the first in the future. Is this possible?

Four ideas by Alvin Plantinga about God and materialism

Alvin Plantinga

Taking advantage of the awarding of the Templeton Prize to the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga, this post will try to review a few of his thoughts in the debate between theism and materialism. As it is impossible to review all his work in detail, I will mention just four of his ideas:

1. The Mozart argument for the existence of God. Why are we able to appreciate beauty? According to the materialistic hypothesis, there is no explanation why evolution has led us to this, as it is difficult to see how this trait could be useful for our survival. Instead of good music, we should appreciate cacophony, which is more abundant in nature. If we assume that God exists, however, this fact is easy to explain, because God appreciates beauty (in fact, God is beauty). This argument, along with many others, is in this web address.

The problem of Achilles and the tortoise

Zeno of Elea

Zeno of Elea, a follower of Parmenides, is mainly remembered for his paradoxes which try to prove that movement does not exist, especially the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, which asserted that it would be impossible for Achilles to catch the tortoise in a race, if he had accepted a starting handicap.

We know that Achilles runs faster than the tortoise (otherwise he could not catch it and the paradox would make no sense). As he has taken a handicap, when Achilles starts to run the tortoise will already be at a certain distance, at point A. When Achilles reaches point A, the tortoise will have advanced to point B. When Achilles reaches B, the tortoise is already in C, and so on, ad infinitum.

The time Achilles needs to catch the tortoise will be the sum of the times it takes him to reach points A, B, C... The total time is, therefore, the sum of an infinite series of numbers. The problem is that Zeno thinks that the sum of an infinite series of numbers must be infinite, so Achilles will never catch the tortoise (this is the conclusion of his reasoning). This, however, is not true: there are many infinite series whose sum is finite. One of them is precisely the series that computes the time needed by Achilles to catch the tortoise, according to Zeno’s reasoning.

About consciousness

Mirror Self-Recognition
(Steve Jurvetson, Menlo Park)

One of the most serious difficulties faced by materialists is the problem of consciousness, sometimes called self-awareness, the awareness I have of being myself rather than another person or object, the feeling of being the same individual from my first memory to my death, even though every few years all my atoms are changed, and hence the specific matter which makes up my body.

Since the materialist ideology assumes that only matter (in the broad sense) exists, it adopts a reductionist approach, according to which our self-consciousness must be, by definition, an epiphenomenon, the result of the joint action of our neurons. This is a dogmatic stance, without scientific support, as in the present state of our knowledge neuroscience has not the faintest idea about how self-consciousness is generated.

Inside Out

The materialist atheist philosophy has a problem: it cannot explain human free will, the existence of which has been a universal consensus among philosophers and individual human beings. So, they are bent on denying its existence. Is there an easier way to solve a problem that deny there is one? Thus they offer a number of theories to explain it away. I will cite a few:

• Free will is just an appearance. We are really the toy of our feelings (joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust...). The Disney-Pixar film Inside Out could be an example of this philosophical stance.

Questions for materialist atheists

Steven Weinberg

There is a website (10 questions Christians must answer) that offers 10 questions to believers in Christianity. If they consider and meditate these questions deeply, they are supposed to convince themselves that their religious beliefs are absurd, that the best they can do is convert to atheism. This website (and others like it) gave us the idea that these contributions are double-edged, as the same procedure can be used for the opposite purpose: one can also be skeptical towards materialism. Therefore we are proposing here a few questions and offer a link to the atheistic page to give the reader the chance to compare both approaches impartially and draw their own conclusions.

1.      Consider this assertion: Nothing exists but those things with which science can experiment. Do you believe this because of scientific reasons, or it is a dogma for you?