Naturalism and Scientism Are Philosophy, not Science
Bill Vallicella at Right Reason nicely puts naturalism, scientism, and anti-ID arrogance and philosophical naivete together. People just can’t seem to realize that to conclude there is no divine intervention needs empirical justification just as much as to assume there is divine intervention— and that neither side has anywhere near a conclusive case. Indeed, the ID people are trying much harder to argue empirically for their position than the anti-ID people, who usually just sneer and act (a) as if their position doesn’t need any evidence, or (b) as if the existing evidence for evolution somehow proves that God has never, ever, not one single time, intervened in evolution.
It is unfortunately necessary to repeat that naturalism and scientism are not
scientific but philosophical doctrines with all the rights, privileges, and
liabilities pertaining thereunto. Among these liabilities, of course, is a
lack of empirical verifiability. Naturalism and scientism cannot be supported
scientifically. For example, we know vastly more than Descartes (1596-1650) did
about the brain, but we are no closer than he was to a solution of the mind-body
problem. Neuroscience will undoubtedly teach us more and more about the brain,
but it shows a breathtaking lack of philosophical sophistication — or else
ideologically induced blindness — to think that knowing more and more about
the physical properties of a lump of matter will teach us anything about
consciousness, the unity of consciousness, self-conciousness, intentionality,
and the rest.
May 27th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Studying the brain as a lump of stuff will probably not, in itself, tell us much about intentionality and the unity of consciousness and all that other stuff, no. In as far as these things are considered as mentalistic, Platonic, non-physical absolutes nothing will tell us about them at all, because these things do not exist, and this characterisation of them is a blind alley. Obviously we are conscious, and there is intentionality, but if we’re going to demystify these things we had better start by not making any philosophical presumptions about them.
In order to understand consciousness and intentionality we have to look at what the brain does, and allows us (as persons, embodied persons mind you) to do, in our multifarious interactions with the world. The unity of consciousness makes a lot more sense when you we begin to look at speech production in cognitive science, at how a Joycean narrative - the coherent story of an ‘inner world/stream’ - is ultimately produced by speech and the anticipation of speech. Then, to understand how intentionality can come about to allow for a semantic language at all, we have to look at what we actually do, socially, with words (words being, essentially, actions) - how through continual practise and training we fall into routines of custom and habit which allow a web of sementics to supervene on ‘dumb forms and signs’, and create the connection between language and reality. And so on and so forth. There is much to be done but at least cognitive science and naturalistic philosophy is exploring interesting new avenues and making progress, as opposed to rationalist tubthumpers who bang on and on about question-begging ‘indefinable’ qualia and intensionality and so forth.
Ants follow trails and send each other chemical messages. No doubt they are acting on instinct…but what seperates this from our complex linguistic procedures? Is it that they, mysteriously, lack some sort of soulful mental talisman (intentionality or qualia), or is rather that our practises are much more sophisticated and advanced? Our use of language is just as instinctive as an ants leaving a chemical trail - it’s simply a lot more nuanced…and familiar to us. We are succesful animals.
I detest scientism, and do not think science has all the answers (why on Earth would all deep questions demand a scientific answer? Science only captures one aspect of the world). Nonetheless, the approach characterised by William Vallicella is the opposite extreme, and is just as paltry and just as unhelpful. I think it’s time we went back to before the dark ages of philosophy and took a leaf out of William James’ book - to stop demanding that explanations take one form or the other before the investigation, and instead go forward and see what works as it comes about. Cognitive science is doing some sterling work. Philosophers of mind are, as of present, not.