Dualism is Not a Dirty Word

There are two major flavours of naturalism - methodological naturalism and metaphysical or philosophical naturalism. The former essentially means adopting the attitude that the latter is true as a pragmatic step without actually committing to the view that it is literally so. As such, only metaphysical naturalism is really in need of clarification.

I have already explained on this blog that I am a metaphysical naturalist, and what I think this entails, in particular the distinction between the supernatural and the natural. All too often these are unhelpfully defined simply as antonyms of each other.

To recap briefly on that earlier article, and I think to clarify and expand it in the light of recent thinking on the subject, I propose the following definition:

Naturalism is the view that the physical universe is fundamentally intelligible.

Let's extend this to make a number of other statements which I regard as equivalent or derivable from that basic definition.

(For the purposes of this discussion, a physical phenomenon or effect is an object, event or series of events which could in principle be objectively detected or verified by independent observers.)

In the naturalist view:

• All physical effects have physical causes
• All high-level physical phenomena can in principle be described in terms of lower-level physical phenomena
• The most fundamental, basic level of physical phenomena corresponds to the fundamental laws of physics, which are expressible in terms of mathematics

In my view, this definition rules out libertarian free will, for example, because the decisions of people have physical effects yet libertarians reject any physical, deterministic account of human decision-making.

Most naturalists seem to be physicalists, believing only physical stuff such as matter and energy to exist, and many even think that physicalism is identical to naturalism. It isn't though, and this distrust of the non-physical is partly responsible for an unwarranted contempt for the alternative view - dualism.

Free Will and Punishment

I have a lot of time for both Sam Harris and Dan Dennett. I find I often disagree with Harris, but his arguments are usually interesting and well-considered. The disagreements I have with him are often subtle, as in the case of The Moral Landscape, where I think his moral framework is perfectly valid and useful but not the only objectively correct one.

I seem to agree with Dan Dennett most of the time. I like his thinking on consciousness, religion etc, and I admire his gentle, humorous and thoughtful way of expressing himself.

However, Harris and Dennett find themselves in disagreement on the subject of free will, and I have to side with Harris on this one. I think the disagreement is an important one when considering questions of moral responsibility.

Atheism is not Communism

A common argument against atheism is the claim that the deaths of millions in communist China and Russia during the Mao and Stalin eras show what happens when atheism is embraced by governments. The implication is that atheism and atheists are immoral, and that the only thing preventing society from disintegrating into an inhuman authoritarian hell is the morality emanating from the religious in society.

Some even claim that that's where we would be headed if the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens ever got their hands on the reins of power.

I couldn't disagree more.

Consciousness is not like Photosynthesis

I've been posting some comments on Massimo Pigliucci's blog recently in defense of Strong AI, after a couple of posts attacking the computational theory of mind.

In the first, he uses John Searle's Chinese Room argument to demonstrate that a computer cannot be conscious. If you've been paying attention to this blog, you should know what I think of that argument!

In the second post, he uses an article by Jack Copeland which undermines the position of philosophers who take the Church-Turing thesis to imply that a Turing machine can do any computation performable by any machine. Unfortunately, Pigliucci seems to fail to realise that while Copeland is technically correct, the philosophers he criticises are no less so unless some very unlikely propositions turn out to be true (i.e. that the laws of physics are not computable and the brain is a hypercomputer).

But what motivated me to write this post is the same tired old argument that keeps coming up again and again in these discussions, the analogy to photosynthesis.

Attacking the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

My last post presented what I feel is the strongest form of the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN) promoted by Alvin Plantinga.

Today I will attempt to refute it.

Rather than argue as some have that we can rely on our reason because of tools developed over centuries by a process of cultural evolution, I want to show that even the primitive faculties provided to us by evolution have given us abilities in this regard.

Unlike Plantinga, I certainly do not accept the premise that evolution and naturalism imply a low probability that we can reliably form beliefs.

Defending The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EEAN)

As part of a disagreement with philosopher Massimo Pigliucci on Rationally Speaking, I have found myself in the unusual position of having to defend Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.

As a firm proponent of philosophical naturalism, I do not find the EAAN to be persuasive. However, I feel that Pigliucci has treated the argument unfairly, glossing over the crucial point and picking at irrelevant details.

In this post, I will attempt to defend the argument and present it as persuasively as I can. In a later post, I intend to refute it.

Strong AI: Conclusion

I've taken a long hiatus while I tried to think if there was anything substantive I had left to say about Strong AI. I didn't come up with much, so I'll wrap it up with this post.