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Liberal Naturalism

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
As probably many of you have done, my life has been one of wondering and searching, thus leading me to contemplate what's really going on here with religion in mind. About 15 years ago, with help from a book entitled "E=MC2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation" by David Bodanis that scared me even before I read it because I was worried it would shake me up, my fear was well founded.

Einstein believed in what he called "Spinoza's God", and both of them can be classified as believers in "liberal naturalism" even though they didn't use that terminology. Spinoza often called God by a different name: "Nature". Einstein took it a step further saying that if one studies the cosmos and all that's in it, one can get at least a better understanding what God is like, feeling that they cannot be separated.

Sweden is one of the countries whereas this is a fairly popular approach, and most Swedes tend to feel that they can more relate to God by observing the countryside or the woods than in a church or synagogue. I generally feel that way, although I do attend services regularly.

Here's a general summary:
Liberal naturalism is a heterodox form of naturalism that lies in the conceptual space between scientific (or reductive) naturalism and supernaturalism. It allows that one can respect the explanations and results of the successful sciences without supposing that the sciences are our only resource for understanding humanity and our dealings with the world and each other. For a liberal naturalist many things in our everyday world that are not explicable (or not fully explicable) by science are, nonetheless, presupposed by science—e.g. tables, persons, artworks, institutions, rational norms and values. Explaining such things might require non-scientific non-supernatural resources according to this form of naturalism. So, rather than tailoring their ontology to the posits of the successful sciences, as scientific naturalists do, liberal naturalists recognise the prima facie irreducible reality of everyday objects that are part of what Wilfrid Sellars called "the manifest image".

Liberal naturalism is a "liberal" or "catholic" naturalism for several reasons each of which contrasts with scientific naturalist orthodoxy:

  1. As we have seen, it does not limit its ontological commitments to the explanatory posits of the successful sciences.
  2. It acknowledges the existence of non-scientific modes of knowing and/or understanding such things as the value of artworks, the moral dimension of persons, and the relations between reasons of different kinds;
  3. It allows for distinctively 1st-personal aspects of rational agency such as making up one's mind, taking responsibility for one's actions, and self-consciousness;
  4. It attempts to provide a non-reductive non-supernatural account of the rational or conceptual normativity to which we are responsive in theoretical and practical reasoning, e.g., by appeal to the Hegelian or pragmatist idea of mutual acknowledgement in a community;
  5. It challenges the widely influential Quinean thesis that philosophy, when properly naturalized, must limit itself to the methods of the successful sciences. --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_naturalism
What do you think about this kind of approach?
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
Huh. Might have a new word for myself. How dare you make me think and attempt to educate me! ;)
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Huh. Might have a new word for myself. How dare you make me think and attempt to educate me! ;)

Hey, I have some names for ya, but I really can't post them here-- religious website, ya know, ;)

BTW, just to let you and others know that I'm outta here until Sunday at the earliest, so you and Ouroboros need to explain it to any interested others.:) Have a great weekend, and...

shalom.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
What do you think about this kind of approach?
I think the key may be how it defines the term 'supernatural'. I don't see how anything that exists could not be 'natural' so the term 'supernatural' is rendered almost meaningless to me. I guess to me the philosophy does not really say anything interesting that we all want to know. I know some people will respond that 'we can't know' certain things but I disagree (by considering human 'spiritual' and 'beyond the normal' experiences, I think I can take a more detailed position).
 

Yerda

Veteran Member
What do you think about this kind of approach?
It sounds really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

It challenges the widely influential Quinean thesis that philosophy, when properly naturalized, must limit itself to the methods of the successful sciences. --

I can't work out what that means. Anyone read any Quine?
 

beenherebeforeagain

Rogue Animist
Premium Member
@Windwalker posted this Einstein quote in another thread, and I'm posting this extract from this roughly 1,000 word essay published in 1931, in which Einstein outlines his philosophy.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms— this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.

"It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature." (Living Philosophies, 1931)

(forgot to include final paragraph)
 
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George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
What do you think about this kind of approach?

I've read the OP description of Liberal Naturalism and thought about it some more. I don't see where it does not still fall under the umbrella of atheistic-materialism. Is it what Dawkins calls 'sexed-up atheism'?

Many people seem to recoil from the label 'atheist-materialist' as it sounds so harsh and unromantic when it perhaps should be viewed as a neutral descriptive term.
 
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Rick O'Shez

Irishman bouncing off walls
I misread the thread title as "Liberal naturism". :oops:

But seriously, it does look rather appealing, the opening out of possibilities. I find relentless rationalism a bit claustrophobic and sometimes rather boring.
 

Ouroboros

Coincidentia oppositorum
I think the key may be how it defines the term 'supernatural'. I don't see how anything that exists could not be 'natural' so the term 'supernatural' is rendered almost meaningless to me.
Yes. That's what I've come to realize too. If something is supernatural as in unnatural, then it doesn't exist. Only natural things exist in my mind. Natural means that it's natural for it to exist. Unnatural means it is unnatural to exist. So to me, the supernatural must be natural, but just another form of it.

I learned years ago, in another forum, through interactions with a friend that also is active on this site, that scientific reductionism isn't the only way to understand things, and even worse, it doesn't explain everything. Which have led me to see the world and science and such in more of a holistic sense.

I guess to me the philosophy does not really say anything interesting that we all want to know. I know some people will respond that 'we can't know' certain things but I disagree (by considering human 'spiritual' and 'beyond the normal' experiences, I think I can take a more detailed position).
The only things we can know for certain are the things we experience. With that I don't mean that the explanation we give to an experience must be true or real, but the experience itself is real to each and everyone of us. When I feel happy, it is a true feeling of happy. All other things, ball, chair, house, car, money, food, friends, etc, are the things outside myself and only the experiences I have when interacting with those things are real to my inner being.

And at the same time, we know from science that feelings are the results of chemical interactions, biochemical-electric signals in neurons, etc, so the feelings are just illusions of what is happening in the world.

So we are, and we aren't.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Yes. That's what I've come to realize too. If something is supernatural as in unnatural, then it doesn't exist. Only natural things exist in my mind. Natural means that it's natural for it to exist. Unnatural means it is unnatural to exist. So to me, the supernatural must be natural, but just another form of it.

I learned years ago, in another forum, through interactions with a friend that also is active on this site, that scientific reductionism isn't the only way to understand things, and even worse, it doesn't explain everything. Which have led me to see the world and science and such in more of a holistic sense.
I think the colloquial meaning of the word 'supernatural' is really 'beyond normal nature'. And by 'normal nature' I mean this three-dimensional space of physical matter and energy. Therefore a ghost, a soul and a god/God would all be supernatural as they are not posited to be part of our 'normal' realm of our senses and instruments. So 'supernatural' should not be understood as 'unnatural' but as 'beyond our normal natural'. And a materialist would say the supernatural does not exist.


The only things we can know for certain are the things we experience. With that I don't mean that the explanation we give to an experience must be true or real, but the experience itself is real to each and everyone of us. When I feel happy, it is a true feeling of happy. All other things, ball, chair, house, car, money, food, friends, etc, are the things outside myself and only the experiences I have when interacting with those things are real to my inner being.

And at the same time, we know from science that feelings are the results of chemical interactions, biochemical-electric signals in neurons, etc, so the feelings are just illusions of what is happening in the world.

So we are, and we aren't.
I would go further and say (as an Advaita adherent) the true experiencer is something not physical (the fundamental consciousness). This is my controversy/difference with materialists.
 

Ouroboros

Coincidentia oppositorum
I think the colloquial meaning of the word 'supernatural' is really 'beyond normal nature'. And by 'normal nature' I mean this three-dimensional space of physical matter and energy. Therefore a ghost, a soul and a god/God would all be supernatural as they are not posited to be part of our 'normal' realm of our senses and instruments. So 'supernatural' should not be understood as 'unnatural' but as 'beyond our normal natural'. And a materialist would say the supernatural does not exist.
True.

I would go further and say (as an Advaita adherent) the true experiencer is something not physical (the fundamental consciousness). This is my controversy/difference with materialists.
Sure.
 

Ouroboros

Coincidentia oppositorum
I would go further and say (as an Advaita adherent) the true experiencer is something not physical (the fundamental consciousness). This is my controversy/difference with materialists.
I have to add something to this point. I don't agree completely that all things only come down to a single form like consciousness anymore than I think all things boils down to matter/energy/spacetime or such. I think both views of some single form of fundamental things that all other things are built on is a form of reductionism and not holistic. Consciousness only is just as reductionistic as matter/energy only. The holistic view is that all things are part of each other and interplay. None is more important than the other. And none can be reduced to the other.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
I have to add something to this point. I don't agree completely that all things only come down to a single form like consciousness anymore than I think all things boils down to matter/energy/spacetime or such. I think both views of some single form of fundamental things that all other things are built on is a form of reductionism and not holistic. Consciousness only is just as reductionistic as matter/energy only. The holistic view is that all things are part of each other and interplay. None is more important than the other. And none can be reduced to the other.
Is that what you mean by being a 'dual-aspect pantheist'? Was there consciousness before the first brain formed then in your view? Well, anyway, in Advaita thought, Consciousness/Brahman is the One and only fundamental and matter and energy are props in the play/drama or Illusion (Maya in Hinduism) of Consciousness/Brahman.
 
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