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NATURALISTIC
THEORY
ABEJERO
QUETUA
QUIJANO
RAFANAN
RIVERA
SAJOL
SIMBULAN
TAGAPAN
TINSAY
VILLALON
ZACARIAS
5ChE-C
Naturalism
O The philosophy that everything that exists is a
part of nature and that there is no reality beyond
or outside of nature
O Relates scientific method to philosophy by
affirming all beings and events in the universe
are natural
O Worldview than relies upon experience, reason,
and science to develop its understanding of
reality and humanity’s place within reality
Close relationships of Science with
Philosophy:
O Science occasionally is naturalistic philosophy
O Naturalistic philosophy explains, justifies, and improves
scientific method
O Naturalistic philosophy constructs and maintains a liberal
political order protecting science
Basic Elements of Naturalism
What there is
all belongs to the natural world, the accurate, adequate
conception of the world does not include reference to
supernatural entities or agencies
How we know
methods of acquiring belief and knowledge is a causal
process within the natural order, and a priori norms, principles,
and methods are not essential to the acquisition or
justification of beliefs and knowledge
History and Origin
History and Origin
O Ionian Enchantment: A Brief History of Scientific Naturalism
- set of advances in scientific thought, explanations on nature,
and discovering the natural and rational causes behind
observable phenomena
O The Ancient Greeks
-Thales
-a philosopher who lived and worked in the Ancient Greek kingdom
of Ionia in the 7th Century BCE
-grandfather of naturalism
-Protagoras, Socrates, Democritus,
O The Middle Ages
-astronomers Copernicus and Galileo, the natural
philosophers Robert Boyle and Francis Bacon, thinkers like
Descartes, and the early modern materialists Gassendi and
Hobbes
-Christian Church dominated all centers of learning in
the Middle Ages
O The Renaissance and Enlightenment
-The achievements of the Renaissance humanists who
are famous to us today through their literary, artistic, and
scientific works made possible by a reinvestment in the value
of two human character traits: worldly curiosity and the
rational powers of the educated mind.
-Leonardo Da Vinci, Erasmus, Copernicus,
Michelangelo, Galileo, Montaigne, and Shakespeare—were
O The Modern Era of Naturalism
-gradual spread of the naturalistic worldview throughout the large
sectors of the European intellectual class in the 19th Century, a series of
humanitarian reform movements were inaugurated
- Darwin’s scientific theories (Origin of Species in 1859) caused
political and cultural turmoil, they also helped give birth to a new school of
American philosophy, known as naturalism
“Here, at last, naturalism took its place as an explicit worldview.”
Etymology
Naturalism has no precise meaning in the contemporary philosophy. The self
proclaimed “naturalists” from the early period were: John Dewey, Ernest Nagel,
Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars.
It relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming all beings and events in
the universe are natural.
There are two kinds of naturalism: Ontological and Methodological
naturalism.
Ontological - concerned with the contents of reality, asserting that reality
has no place for supernatural or other unusual kinds of entity.
Methological – it is more recent and it is in contrast with ontological.
concerned with ways of investigating reality, and claims some kind of general authority
for the scientific method.
A philosopher named Paul de Vries distinguished “methological naturalism” and
“metaphysical naturalism”.
“Methological naturalism” says nothing about God's existence.
“Metaphysical naturalism“ denies the existence of a transcendent God.
Types of Naturalism:
Metaphysical and Methodological
Metaphysical Naturalism
• Also
known as Ontological naturalism, Philosophical naturalism
and Scientific materialism
• The idea behind this principle is that natural causes can be investigated
directly through scientific method.
• The belief that nature is all that exists, and that all things
supernatural (including gods, spirits, souls and non-natural values) therefore
do not exist.
Metaphysical Naturalism: Varieties
• Physicalism or Materialism
The belief that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties, and that the
only existing substance is physical.
• Pluralism
The belief that reality consists of many different substances (including abstract
objects and universals) in addition to those fundamentally mindless arrangements or interactions of
matter-energy in space-time.
Methodological Naturalism
Prepared by: Gemarie Hazel F. Quetua 5CheC
What is Methodological Naturalism?
It is a strategy of studying
the world.
Scientists choose not to consider the supernatural
causes.
What is Methodological Naturalism?
It says nothing about God’s
existence.
In 1983 Paul de Vries distinguished between
"methodological naturalism," a disciplinary method that
says nothing about God's existence, and "metaphysical
naturalism," which "denies the existence of a
transcendent God.
What is Methodological Naturalism?
It is a way of acquiring
knowledge.
According to Sociologist Elaine Ecklund,
Methodological Naturalism is what religious
scientists apply in practice.
What is Methodological Naturalism?
It is an essential aspect on the
methodology of science.
It is a pre-requisite to doing science.
Conclusion
Methodological Naturalism is not concerned on what
does exist and what does not but with the methods of
what is nature.
Views on Naturalistic Theory
Alvin Carl Plantinga
O Evolutionary argument against
naturalism
O God and Other Minds (1967), The
Nature of Necessity (1974), and
Warranted Christian Belief (2000)
EAAN
O Evolutionary argument against naturalism
O The problem: theism and the reliability of cognitive faculties
O Darwin’s doubt
O Beliefs affect behaviour
Plantinga’s Argument
O Evolution and naturalism – 4 F’s (feeding, fleeing, fighting,
and reproducing) - survival
vs
O Man created in the image of God – our faculties are reliable
EAAN
O EAAN argues that the combination of evolutionary theory
and naturalism is self-defeating on the basis of the claim
that if both evolution and naturalism are true, then the
probability of having reliable cognitive faculties is low.
Robert T. Pennock
Perspective on Naturalism
Robert T. Pennock
Philosopher Professor at Michigan State
University
Pennock received his Ph.D. in the history
and philosophy of science from
the University of Pittsburgh, where he
graduated summa cum laude.
Pennock was a witness in the Kitzmiller v.
Dover Area School District trial, testifying
on behalf of the plaintiffs, and described
how intelligent design is an updated form
of creationism and not science,
Books published:
Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the
New Creationism
Intelligent Design Creationism and Its
Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and
Scientific Perspectives
Pennock’s Perspective on Naturalism
O He has written and edited books and articles critical
of intelligent design, using the term methodological
naturalism to emphasize that the scientific
method inherently explains observable events in nature only
by natural causes, without assuming the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural, and is not based on dogmatic
metaphysical naturalism as claimed by creationists.
O “Methodological naturalism is a “ground rule” of science today which requires
scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can
observe, test, replicate, and verify”
O “Intelligent design theorists have learned a few lessons from the failures of their
predecessors and have devised a more sophisticated strategy to compete head on
with evolution. One of the main things they [intelligent design creationists] have
learned is what not to say.
A major element of their strategy is to advance a form of creation that not only omits
any explicit mention of Genesis but is also usually vague, if not mute, about any of the
specific claims about the nature of Creation, the separate ancestry of humans and
apes, the explanation of the earth's geology by catastrophic global flood, or the age of
the earth - items that readily identified young-earth creationism as a thinly disguised
biblical literalism.”
Willard Van Orman Quine
Who is W. V. Quine
O Philosophy is concerned with out
knowledge of the world, and the nature of
the world and it is the attempt to round
out the systems of the world.
O Naturalism is described as the position
that there is no higher tribunal truth than
natural science itself.
Quine’s view on Naturalism
O “the recognition that it is within science
itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that
reality is to be identified and described”
O Two points about the ideas of “science”:
O It is less restrictive than it may seem.
O Scientific Knowledge is a result of
attempts to improve ordinary knowledge
of the world
“Science is not a
substitute for common
sense but an extension of
it”
“The Scientist is indistinguishable
from the common man in his sense
of evidence, except that the scientist
is more careful”
O There is no distinctively philosophical
standpoint.
O Philosophers justify events based on the
available knowledge.
O We adopt what he calls “the fundamental
conceptual scheme of science and common
sense”
Philosophers constrained by scientific
standards.
“In our account of how science might be acquired
we do not try to justify science by some prior and
firmer philosophy, but neither are we to maintain
less than scientific standards. Evidence must
regularly be sought in external objects, out where
observers can jointly observe it…”
Positive Aspects
Negative Aspects
Karl Popper
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Theories are the nets cast to catch what we
call the world: to rationalize, to explain
and to master it.
We endeavor to make the mesh ever finer and
finer.
-Karl Popper
Key Contributions
•Critical Rationalism
•Falsification
•Open Society
•Paradox of Tolerance
•Popper’s Three Worlds
Key Beliefs
The Growth of Knowledge can
be studied best by the growth
of scientific Knowledge
There is no method peculiar
to Philosophy
Falsification
Falsification:
Trying to prove that your
hypothesis is WRONG
not RIGHT
Paradox of Tolerance
Popper’s Three Worlds
1
The WORLD of
PHYSICAL OBJECTS
And EVENTS
Popper’s Three Worlds
2
State of
CONSCIOUSNES
S
Popper’s Three Worlds
3
World of
OBJECTIVE
SENSE
Tom Clark’s View on
Worldwide Naturalism
Tom Clark
Tom Clark is director of the non-profit Center for
Naturalism and author of Encountering Naturalism: A
Worldview and Its Uses. He writes on science, free will,
consciousness, addiction and other topics, and
maintains Naturalism.org, an extensive resource on
worldview naturalism.
Stoic Philosophy
O The ultimate concern of the Stoics was the question of how
life ought to be lived
O Their theory is naturalistic, in the sense that every evaluative
claim they make is based entirely on their conception of the
natural constitution of the human being
O Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of
mind gained from living a life of virtue in accordance
with nature
The Psycho-Physical Foundations of
Ethics
O The Stoics claimed that the human being is a rational animal that
O
O
O
O
O
has a body and a soul
The leading part of the soul is found in the heart
It is the seat of presentations and impulses, and from it rational
discourse is emitted
Stoic ethics concerns the right use of reason.
The ultimate rational agent is fully rational in everything he does,
assenting only to those presentations that are true and acting only
in ways that reasonable.
Nature makes an animal congenial to itself
The Goal
O Our constitution as human beings is to be rational, what is
natural to us is the life according to reason
O Stoics believed that the use of reason itself, rather than the
outcome of its use, which determines the worth of human
action.
Virtue
O To live according to virtue just to live in agreement with nature
O The Stoics believed that virtue can be taught because people do become
more virtuous. The key connection is that living according to nature
requires a knowledge of nature, which can only come through education.
O Four primary virtues:
O Prudence
O Temperance
O Justice
O Courage
Happiness
O The virtuous person is happy just by being virtuous
O Happiness is a kind of optimal or flourishing state of the
human being
O As virtue is living a perfectly rational life, the virtuous person
achieves the best condition possible for a rational animal.
O Chrysippus is said to have held that living consistently with
nature "is the virtue of the happy man and a smooth flow of
life“
The Good
O The good is identified with the virtuous
O The Stoics understood goodness to be that which confers
benefit
O What is beneficial to man is that he live in accordance with
nature, to be virtuous
The Passions
O One the most famous aspects of the Stoic ethical theory is
its advocacy of rational control over the passions
O The Stoic theory describes the passions (pain, pleasure,
fear, desire) as judgments
Civic Life
O The Stoics promoted participation in the life of society as a
whole
O The wise man is well-suited for civic life, due to his overall
excellence
O His rationality makes him lawful and suitable as a ruler
O Among the virtues are public-spiritedness which is
knowledge of fairness in a community, and fair-dealing, a
knowledge of how to deal with one's neighbors blamelessly
Overview of Worldwide Naturalism
O “Understanding our full causal connection to the world
engenders compassion and gives us greater practical
control.”
O “If you don’t believe in anything supernatural, then you
subscribe to naturalism, the idea that nature is all there is.”
O “Wanting to be deceived, you put in empirical, evidencebased ways of justifying beliefs about what’s real, as for
instance exemplified by science.”
Overview of Worldwide Naturalism
O “Naturalism as a metaphysical thesis is driven by a desire
for a clear, reliable account of reality and how it works, a
desire that generates an unflinching commitment to
objectivity and explanatory transparency.
O “Naturalism involves a good deal more than atheism or
skepticism – it’s the recognition that we are full-fledged
participants in the natural order and as such we play by
nature’s rules.”
References:
O http://www.naturalism.org/
O http://www.iep.utm.edu/naturali/
O http://www.naturalism.org/worldview-naturalism/history-of-
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naturalism
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/
http://naturalisms.org/science.htm
http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_naturalism.html
http://hackthesystem.com/blog/stoicism-101-a-quick-guide-tothe-philosophy/
http://hume.ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi143/stoaeth.htm