Thoughts in a Haystack

Larry Moran has a post up about Methodological Naturalism (MN) and a talk given at the Darwin Conference in Toronto last November by Maarten Boudry, a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ghent. Larry gives the abstract for the talk, in which Boudry gives a fair enough summary of MN:

Creationists and intelligent design proponents have previously claimed that the commitment of evolutionists to naturalism and materialism constitutes a philosophical prejudice on their side, because it rules out any kind of supernatural causes by fiat. In response to these charges, some philosophers and scientists have argued that science is only committed to something they call methodological naturalism: Science does not deal with supernatural causes and explanations, but that does not mean that the latter do not exist. However, there has been some philosophical discussion about the correct understanding of MN. The principle of MN is often conceived of as an intrinsic and self-imposed limitation of science, as something that is part and parcel of the scientific enterprise by definition. According to this view (Intrinsic MN or IMN) - which is defended by people like Eugenie Scott, Michael Ruse and Robert Pennock and has been adopted in the ruling of Judge John E. Jones III in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case - science is simply not equipped to deal with the supernatural and therefore has no authority on the issue. It is clear that this depiction of science and MN offers some perspectives for reconciling science and religion. Not surprisingly, IMN is often embraced by those sympathetic to religion, or by those who wish to alleviate the sometimes heated opposition between the two.

Boudry seeks to argue that IMN does not offer a sound rationale for the rejection of supernatural explanations and, instead, should be seen as:

... a provisory and empirically grounded commitment of scientists to naturalistic causes and explanations, which is in principle revocable by future scientific findings (Qualified MN or QMN). In this view, MN is justified as a methodological guideline by virtue of the dividends of naturalistic explanation and the consistent failure of supernatural explanations in the history of science.

Boudry cites four arguments for IMN ("the argument from the definition of science, the argument from lawful regularity, the science stopper argument, and the argument from procedural necessity") that he thinks fail but, of course, without more, there is little that I can say about his claims.

Boudry also states that ID Creationists have exploited IMN, citing Philip Johnson's rhetorical claim that, if science is about following the evidence wherever it leads, scientists should not exclude a priori the possibility of discovering evidence for the supernatural and concludes that IMN is actually grist to the ID mill. This claim is, I think, historically incorrect, in that Johnson was making this claim in support of "theistic science" long before anyone actually formulated MN as a response to Johnson. Nor should we, I think, give up a helpful explanation of the actual practice of science just because creationists will exploit it. After all, what discussion of science, particularly in popular forums, haven't creationists twisted and tried to exploit?

My main question would be why are IMN and QMN incompatible? I would agree that the dividends of naturalistic explanation and the consistent failure of supernatural explanations in the history of science are good grounds for adopting MN. Why wouldn't it be good grounds for defining science as including MN? Sure, maybe someday, someway, we will come to change our definition of science but, in the absence of some plausible scenario of why we might do so, why should we worry about that?

That's about all I can say about Boudry's claims but Larry's claims are another matter. Larry makes two basic assertions:

1. If God exists, then there's no reason why supernatural explanations can't be a legitimate part of science.

The problem with this is that any proposed cause that has unknown properties and that acts with no known regularity is uninvestigatable. Suppose I was to propose that the timing of the radioactive decay of any uranium atom in the universe is controlled by a force I call "grumpus." However, I maintain that grumpus cannot be detected by any scientific instrument and does not act by any pattern of regularity. How could anyone test whether grumpus exists?

Now maybe some people claim that grumpus does act, at least sometimes, with regularity and others claim that they can detect grumpus. But if you show that there is no pattern in the decay of uranium atoms and the claimed detection of grumpus was in error, all you've done is proven those people's claims are in error, not that grumpus doesn't exist or that it doesn't act in ways we can't detect.

Of course, you can reject grumpus as a scientific concept on the basis that there is no empiric evidence for it ... but that's just MN.

These problems exists in spades with an infinite, omnipotent and omniscient being with unknown motives and aims.

2. How do draw the line between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism? Obviously, there's no difference for an atheist; in fact, the distinction seems rather silly. If supernatural explanations are never found to be necessary in explaining the natural world then doesn't it make sense to conclude that fairies and Santa Claus don't exist?

Not everything that it "makes sense" to conclude is science. It is reasonable to conclude that politicians are liars and/or crooks based on past experience. That is not (without more) a scientific result. Science implies a systematic study of an empiric phenomena under conditions as controlled as possible to eliminate other possible factors than those being studied. Larry's vague "sense" that the world works in ways that make fairies and Santa impossible is not a scientific result and, given a paucity of terms to describe "Larry's "sense," I'd call it "philosophy."

The distinction between the two seems to me to be pretty easy to recognize (though, as a plethora of philosophers have discovered, to their dismay, pretty hard to define). Someone who is doing rigorous science and (as rigorous science demands) reporting only the clear empiric results of her observations and experiments and an interpretation of those results in light of a well-worked-out theoretical structure (that is empirically testable in many ways) without overstating her results and conclusions is probably doing science and will automatically be practicing MN. Someone who is making broad conclusions with little or no reference to specific evidence (especially when appealing to "sense") is almost certainly doing philosophy.
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